Language and Cognition Lab

Lab Personnel Faculty \| Graduate Students \| Lab Affiliates \| Lab Alumni Faculty
	Paul Bloom My research explores the nature of language and thought, primarily from a developmental perspective. I am currently working with students on a range of different issues, including social cognition in babies, the developing understanding of art and fiction, and the nature of disgust and humor. Please see the Publications page for links to some of my papers.
Graduate Students
	Louisa Egan I study morality in adults, children, and nonhuman primates. I am particularly interested in instances of moral failure, that is, when people know the right thing to do, yet pursue an alternate course of action. With Dr. Bloom, I am examining the foundations of moral hypocrisy, the role of empathetic emotions in prosocial behavior, and the moral-conventional distinction in moral reasoning. I am also conducting research on morality-based inferences of intentionality with Dr. Laurie Santos and on moral credentialing effects with Dr. Geoff Cohen.
	Izzat Jarudi I am primarily interested in studying morality (moral choice, judgment, emotions, and norms) using the tools and ideas of cognitive, social, and evolutionary psychology. Here are a couple of questions I am currently exploring with Dr. Bloom: (1) Artificial enhancement: why do people think using certain performance-enhancing drugs or technologies such as steroids or genetic engineering is wrong? (2) Moral objects: we have found evidence that people, especially conservatives, treat everyday objects in the world (e.g., refrigerators, chairs) as having moral qualities (being morally good or bad). What explains this puzzling psychological tendency and how might it vary across individuals from different cultures such as China? I also work with Dr. Frank Keil on projects that seek to understand the psychology of conspiracy theories, human rights, and moral progress (i.e., how moral attitudes and norms change over time).
	Mark Sheskin I am a first year graduate student. My research interests are at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, particularly in the area of moral judgments. More generally, how does our evolutionary history as a species as well as our individual development through infancy and childhood influence the ways in which we think about the world? This question includes not only study of the processes by which we come to moral judgments (including the interplay between reasoning, intuitions, and emotions), but also issues related to the non-moral assumptions that are commonly integral to moral issues.
Lab Affiliates
	Jane Erickson My primary research interests lie in cognitive development with a focus on conceptual development, naïve biology, and theory of mind. In particular, I am interested in the developmental origins of, and interaction between, naïve biology and theory of mind. A current project is looking to see at what age children begin to distinguish biological from psychological phenomena. A second project seeks to discover whether or not children attribute intentionality to biological processes and how this may change throughout development.
	Kiley Hamlin I am a first year graduate student. My main interest is in the ways that infants come to understand the minds and interactions of people around them. My research deals primarily with the moral cognitive abilities of infants, such as what infants understand about “good guys” and “bad guys.” Additionally, I am interested in how young infants understand the intentions and goals of others, most especially those goals that go unrealized. I work primarily with Karen Wynn in the Infant Cognition Center.
	Caroline Proctor I pursue work on our intuitive theories and ways we reason about the world. Currently, I am conducting research on how people reason about the biological and psychological nature of mental disorders. This can help tell us how we intuitively think about the mind and brain. Other projects of mine have involved essentialism, looking at how we often overextend our beliefs about the natural world to other categories where these beliefs are not as appropriate.
	Lisa Zunshine I am a visiting scholar for 2007-2008, supported by a Guggenheim fellowship. I am interested in how cultural representations engage our theory of mind. One of my books focuses specifically on the novel (Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, 2006). Another builds on Scott Atran’s, Paul Bloom’s, Pascal Boyer’s, and Susan Gelman’s work on essentialism to talk about science fiction’s use of robots, cyborgs, androids, nonsense poetry, and surrealist art (Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible, 2008). My current project, tentatively titled “Fictions of Transparency: How Movies, Novels, and Paintings Play with our Minds,” looks at strategies used by writers, artists, and filmmakers to put their characters into a state of “embodied transparency,” in which their bodies reveal their feelings, sometimes against their wills.
	Gil Diesendruck, Ph.D. Senior Lecturer Department of Psychology Bar-Ilan University
Lab Alumni
	Koleen McCrink, Ph.D Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Psychology Harvard University
	Erik Cheries, Ph.D Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Psychology Harvard University
	Erika Nurmsoo, Ph.D. Research Fellow Department of Psychology University of Warwick
	Melissa Allen Preissler, Ph.D. Lecturer School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences University of Edinburgh
	Candice Mills, Ph.D. Assistant Professor School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences University of Texas at Dallas
	Judith Danovitch, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher Child Study Center Yale University
	Susan Birch, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology University of British Columbia
	Valerie Kuhlmeier, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Queens University
	Kristy vanMarle, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychological Sciences University of Missouri - Columbia
	David Pizarro, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Cornell University
	Lori Markson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology University of California at Berkeley
	Deborah Kelemen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Boston University
	Deena Skolnick Weisberg My research focuses on children's and adults' understanding of fiction and pretend play. Two of my current projects examine how children and adults create fictional worlds and how they differentiate fictional worlds from each other and from the real world. In future research, I plan to explore the nature of the cognitive skills used to create and understand different types of non-real worlds, including fictional stories, pretend play games, and counterfactual scenarios.
	Nic Noles My research program is dedicated to understanding concepts and other psychological phenomena that are essential to everyday experiences, but rarely studied because they do not fall cleanly within disciplinary boundaries. These phenomena often involve input that may be visual and social, and I employ cognitive and developmental methods to study how they function and develop. A critical feature of my work is that I take what is known about canonical representations and apply it to understanding more abstract concepts, such as fairness, ownership, and morality.
	Lawrence Williams I am interested in understanding how and why people come to enjoy violent or otherwise aversive forms of entertainment. I am particularly interested in the roles that empathy, mastery, and feelings of physical arousal play in our imaginative lives. My work is primarily done with Dr. John Bargh in the Social Psychology area.