BIOGRAPHY
The majority of my work examines how children learn about the causal structure of the world. To investigate this, my colleagues and I developed the "blicket detector," a device that lights up and plays music when certain objects, controlled by the experimenter, are placed on it. Using this device, we have examined how children use the causal properties of objects to guide their categorization, how children make inductive and deductive inferences, and what biases children have when interpreting ambiguous data. I have also looked at the relation between children's causal reasoning and the development of causal language and children's ability to provide explanations of events.
Recently I have started a set of projects on how children and adults learn causal structure from observing and interacting with the world. This project is guided by the literature on causal graphical models.
I also participate in research that examines children's understanding of mental representation. Initially, my colleagues and I focused on determining when children understand pretense as a mental state. I have also combined this project with my interest in causal reasoning and have investigated how and when children engage in counterfactual reasoning – reasoning about events that might have happened, but actually did not.
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