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Child Cognition Lab!

Lab Party Fall 2008
Back row (left to right): Professor Deb Kelemen (with Ali!), Holly Jacobs, Samantha Barry, Missy Goldberg, Meredith Taylor, Dana Schmohl, Kristy Bondi
Front row (left to right): Anna Kyritsis, Becca Seston, Jennifer Ontaneda, Megan Baumgarten, Carina Wind, Juliana Gorian
Not pictured: Josh Rottman

 
 

Faculty/Staff

Deb Kelemen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology, Lab Director [CV]
Within the field of conceptual development, fundamental questions concern how children acquire knowledge and how children's beliefs about the world relate to adults' beliefs. My research program has been devoted to examining these questions and, in particular, to exploring the degree to which children's and adults' conceptions of human-made objects and natural phenomena truly differ. Recent projects include studies of how children think about the origins of living and non-living natural objects and the reasons why people find some ideas (e.g., natural selection) so difficult to grasp.

Much of our current research is also devoted to studying how children learn about unfamiliar objects. For example, we know that, as a species, human beings are unique in their abilities to create and use tools but how do very young children learn about artifacts? What kinds of social and physical information do they use when trying to categorize something unfamiliar? In related work, we are exploring the processes by which children acquire the social norms and cultural conventions of their community: Are children primed to just blindly trust anything that an adult does or are they discriminating about what they are being shown and who is showing them?

Laure Saint Georges
Lab Manager
I graduated from Trinity University (San Antonio, TX) in 2009 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Spanish. Previously, I was working in the Children’s Lab at Trinity University on language acquisition. I love working with children, especially in developmental research. I am very excited about working in the Child Cognition Lab here at BU and I plan to go to Graduate school in Psychology working with children in the future.

 

Graduate Students

Becca Seston
Graduate Student, Fall 2009
I graduated from Wellesley in 2005 with a B.A. in psychology and have loved being the lab manager for the Child Cognition Lab since 2006. I am thrilled to begin my graduate work here in Fall 2009! I'm interested in studying how, when and under what circumstances, children acquire conventional and scientific knowledge from others. When I'm not in the lab, I like playing board games, watching movies, singing, and hanging out with my nieces and nephews.

Josh Rottman
Graduate Student, Fall 2009
After growing up in Colorado, I moved east to study cognitive science at Vassar College, graduating with a B.A. in 2008. I am primarily interested in the metaphysical intuitions that people have in regard to religious phenomena, especially pertaining to morality and teleology. As a graduate student, I plan to explore the ways in which people infer purpose and design in their own lives and in the lives of humans more generally. When I'm not immersing myself in psychology, I enjoy hiking, acting, and scuba diving.

 

Research Assistants 2009-2010

Megan Baumgarten
B.A. 2010

   

Mariana Boia
B.A. 2011

   

Missy Goldberg
B.A. 2011

   

Anna Kyritsis
B.A. 2010

   

Rachel Lissandrello
B.A. 2011

   

Meredith Taylor
B.A. 2010

 

Former Graduate Students

Brenda Caldwell Phillips, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Novick Lab
Department of Psychology
Vanderbilt University

   

Krista Casler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Director, Child Development Lab at F&M
Department of Psychology
Franklin & Marshall College

   

Cara DiYanni, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Rider University

   

Elizabeth Donovan, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Inflexxion, Inc.

   

Evelyn Rosset, Ph.D.
Boston University Child Cognition Lab
Aboutmind

   
  Former Research Assistants  

Monica Anand
Boston University
B.A. 2008

Christine Mihal
Boston University
M.A. 2008
Emily Babb
Boston University
B.A. 2007
Yannos Misitzis
Boston University
M.A. 2007
   
Stephen Bandini
University of Virginia
B.A. 2010
Jennifer Ontaneda
Boston University
B.A. 2009
   
Samantha Barry
Boston University
B.A. 2009
Cassie Pestana
Boston University
B.A. 2007

Kristy Bondi
Boston University
B.A. 2009

Annie Putnam
Boston University
B.A. 2006
Eva Cassedy
Brandeis University
B.A. 2009
Tasha Ramanayake
Boston University
B.A. 2007
   
Sabrina De Los Santos
Boston University
B.A. 2009
Julia Rubin
Beaver Country Day School
Class of 2008
   
Maelyn Entwhistle
Boston University
B.A. 2006
Evan Schinell
Boston University
B.A. 2007
   
Narien Guul
Boston University
B.A. 2008
Dana Schmol
Boston University
B.A. 2009
   
Kristin Hammond
Providence College
B.A. 2009
Yael Stern
Tufts University
B.A. 2010
   
Holly Jacobs
Boston University
B.A. 2008
Michelle St. Paul
Boston University
B.A. 2009
   
Tracy Kilcoyne
Boston University
B.A. 2009
Carina Wind
Boston University
B.A. 2008
   
Alissa Makarovskaya
Boston University
B.A. 2009
Melissa Yanovitch
Mount Holyoke College
B.A. 2009
   
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