Research

Please see the Developmental Cognition Lab.

The central aim of my research is to understand the origins and development of quantitative concepts. Number, time, and space are foundational aspects of our everyday perception and cognition. Nonetheless, despite decades of intense empirical investigation into the nature and origins of these concepts in humans, there are still fundamental questions left unanswered.

My research addresses two of these fundamental issues: (1) How do we come to have concepts of number, time, and space in the first place? And, (2) what is the format of our quantity representations?

To address these questions, I investigate the nature and development of quantity and object representations across a range of ages, focusing primarily on infancy and early childhood. I use an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on theories of development, together with theories of animal cognition, and visual cognition in an effort to understand whether the same cognitive mechanisms are present across species and throughout development.