Current Projects

Our research targets a range of questions related to social, causal, and intentional understanding. In order to explore the development of these abilities, we carry out research with participants of all different ages. Our infancy research involves participants as young as 6 months of age! We also have projects for 3-4 year old children, and other studies for adults. Each study is carefully designed with the age of our participants in mind so that it’s interesting without being overly challenging, and the tasks involved in each study are chosen to reflect the age and developmental abilities of the group for whom it’s intended. Adult studies often involve watching short video clips and answering simple questions about them. Studies for children often involve playing games or learning new words. Infancy studies usually includes watching short movies or a live actor perform some novel actions to measure what infants are most interested in looking at. We also often engage them in simple action or problem solving tasks with toys. Some of the projects that we’ve recently finished or are currently working on include:

Research with infants

Pattern detection in action processing
Segmentation of continuous action
Configural processing of human action
Learning from pedagogical interactions

Research with 3-4 year old children

Detection of action units and boundaries
Individual differences in social learning
Ease of learning differences in language

Research with adults

Pattern detection in novel action sequences
Pattern detection in still image segments
Identification and categorization of action