Our Research
Current research questions
From the very first time they open their eyes, infants are faced with a tough problem. They have to take the vast amount of visual information available in the world and carve it up into the meaningful units that are most relevant to us as humans: namely, inanimate objects and animate agents. In the Developing Minds Lab, we are interested in how infants and children perceive, understand, and remember objects and agents.
We use a developmental approach, studying children ages 3 months and up, to answer the following questions:
- What do we remember about objects when they are out of view?
- How many objects can we remember? What are the limits?
- How do infants and children overcome these limits? Do they “chunk” like adults do?
- Does what we remember about objects change when we see other people interacting with those objects?
- How do we differentiate objects and people?
- How do we know what other people are thinking?
- How do our early representations of objects support learning of more advanced concepts later on, such as mathematics and physics?
Want to see some of our lab’s most recent research? Check out our newsletters:
Academic Year 2020-2021 Newsletter
Academic Year 2019-2020 Newsletter
Academic Year 2018-2019 Newsletter
Academic Year 2017-2018 Newsletter
Check out all of the current studies from the BU Child Development Labs, or fill out our parent interest form!
