Kathleen Corriveau
Associate Dean, Faculty Affairs
Professor
Dr. Kathleen Corriveau is the associate dean for faculty affairs and a professor at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. She also directs the Social Learning Laboratory at BU Wheelock. Her research focuses on social-cognitive development of trust in early childhood, bridging ideas from developmental and social psychology and applying them to educational settings. Previously, she served as the associate dean for research.
Dedicated to enhancing school readiness for all children, Dr. Corriveau is a former National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, and is the current recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award exploring the role of adult explanations in STEM learning, as well as a $10 million grant from the Templeton Foundation to form the Developing Belief Network, an international network of researchers interested in the cross-cultural development of religious cognition. She has published articles in numerous refereed journals, including Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and Cognitive Science. She is the coeditor of The Questioning Child: Insights from Psychology and Education and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Cognition and Development and the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, and as a consulting editor for Child Development and Developmental Psychology.
Dr. Corriveau’s work has received national media attention, with media coverage from New York Daily News, USA Today, Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Reader, The Week UK, Religion News Service, World Religion News, Philosophy News, Slate, Swedish Radio, the Economist, and CBC Radio. She has received numerous awards, including named Fellow from the Association for Psychological Science and American Psychological Association, and an Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association.
Recent News
Education
EdD, Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University
MPhil in Education, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge
MEd, Mind, Brain and Education, Harvard University
ScB, Cognitive Neuroscience, Brown University
Courses
CE 801 Cognitive and Affective Bases of Behavior
DS 600 Culture, Ethnicity and Race: A Developmental Approach
Research
Recently Funded Research
Templeton Foundation Large Grant (Role: PI) 2020-2025 “Developing Belief: The Development and Diversity of Religious Cognition and Behavior”
National Science Foundation CAREER Grant (Role: PI) 2017-2022 “Developing critical STEM thinkers: Optimizing explanations in inquiry-based learning”
Templeton Foundation Large Grant (Role: PI) 2016-2019 "The role of religious exposure in children's conceptualization of the invisible and the impossible"
Selected Publications
Visit the Social Learning Laboratory website for a complete list.
Cui, Y.K., Clegg, J.M, Fang, Y.E., Davoodi, T., Harris, P.L. & Corriveau, K.H. (2020). Religious testimony in a secular society: Belief in unobservable entities among Chinese parents and their children. Developmental Psychology, 56(1):117-127.
Davoodi, T., Cui, Y.K., Clegg, J., Fang, Y.E., Payir, A., Harris, P.L. & Corriveau, K.H. (2020). Epistemic justifications for belief in the unobservable: The impact of minority status. Cognition, 200, 104273.
Clegg, J., Kurkul, K. & Corriveau, K.H. (2019). Trust me, I’m a competent expert: Developmental changes in children’s use of explanation quality to infer trustworthiness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 188, 104670.
Leech, K., Haber, A., Arunachalam, S., Kurkul, K. & Corriveau, K.H. (2019). On the malleability of selective trust. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 65-74.
Harris, P.L., Koenig, M.A., Corriveau, K.H. & Jaswal, V.K. (2018). Cognitive foundations of learning from testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 251-273.
Selected Presentations
Visit the Social Learning Laboratory website for a complete list.
Cui, Y.K., Davoodi, T., Payir, A., Clegg, J., Harris, P.L. & Corriveau, K.H. (2018, August). Parental stance towards science and religion in the USA, Iran and China. Paper to be presented at the biennial International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion, Boston, MA.
Cui, Y.K., Ronfard, S. & Corriveau, K.H. (2018, April). The impact of learner-centered versus teacher-centered pedagogical practices on children’s teaching styles. Paper presented at the annual American Education Research Association, New York, NY.
Campbell, I., **Clegg, J. & Corriveau, K.H. (2017, October). Investigating science together: Pedagogical approaches for parent-child scientific learning interactions. Poster presented at the biennial Cognitive Development Society, Portland, OR.
Castine, E., Clegg, J. & Corriveau, K.H. (2017, October). Impacting children’s social inferences through a continuum framework. Poster presented at the biennial Cognitive Development Society, Portland, OR.
DiYanni, C. & Corriveau, K.H. (2017, April). Cultural differences in the imitation and transmission of inefficient actions. Paper presented at the biennial Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX.