Our lab researches how children think about the world around them and how this changes throughout their development.
In particular, we look at: 1) how children think about information sources like the internet, voice assistants, and adults belonging to varying social categories, as well as 2) how children categorize others and make judgments about them.
Our projects are often designed and led by graduate students and/or conducted with our collaborators. Our current studies investigate the following topics:​​
How children think about people, fictional characters, books, and technological devices as information sources
Dr. Danovitch collaborates on some projects under this topic with Jonathan Lane, Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University and Fuxing Wang, Ph.D. at Central China Normal University
How children make judgements about people, including how they decide that people are nice (or not) and smart (or not)
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Dr. Noles collaborates on some projects under this topic with Yarrow Dunham, Ph.D., at Yale University
How children think about limits of their own knowledge (Intellectual Humility) - a project funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
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Dr. Danovitch collaborates on this multi-site project with researchers from the University of Toronto, NYU, UT Dallas, University of Virginia, Franklin and Marshall College, and Technical University of Munich
How children think about ownership and property
Dr. Noles collaborates on this work with Margaret Echelbarger, Ph.D., at Stony Brook University
​How adolescents in India and U.S. evaluate their motivation and beliefs about science learning
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Dr. Danovitch and graduate student Khushboo Patel collaborate on this project with Allison Master, Ph.D., at the University of Houston
How children perceive economic value and learn about ownership from their parents
Dr. Noles collaborates on this work with Susan Gelman, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan