In this study, we examine how children make inferences about new people they meet and what information sources they use (for example, the characteristics of the group to which the person belongs, or the words said about the person). In our study, we display children some stories and ask them what they think about the characters in the stories.
In these studies, we aim to investigate the type of social inferences that infants make about infant-directed and adult-directed communications and their expectations for these types of communication. We show infants visual or auditory clips, measure how much they attend to these while they are seated on their parent's lap or in a high chair.
In this study, we aim to examine the scope and purpose of communication styles for infants. We collect voice recordings from mothers with infants while telling their infants about various objects. In an additional project which we conduct with adults, we also investigate the type of inferences that adults make about these styles of communication.
In this study, we examine how mothers and fathers communicate with their children since birth. Parents share their audio recordings with us on our website while talking naturally with their children (for example; the last book they read together or their visit to the zoo).
In this study, we investigate what children think about how other children have learned different knowledge types. We aim to see similar and different attitudes towards in-group and out-group children regarding the sources of knowledge and learning styles.
In this study, we investigate children's selective trust in the information given by people speaking with different accents. We ask children whether they trust in statements made by people speaking with different accents about improbable (e.g., someone riding a zebra) or impossible (e.g., someone riding a fly) events.
