Who We Are
What we do
Children are the only organisms in the known universe who solve all the hard problems of cognitive science, and they do so seemingly effortlessly -- while playing with sand and making up pretend games. To understand human cognition, we need to understand the processes that support learning in early childhood.
Our lab has worked on many different content areas over the past fifteen years, including concepts and causal reasoning; morality and emotion; effort, persistence, and metacognition; pragmatics, pedagogy, and play. The diversity of topics reflects a practice of centering content areas around student interests -- and because students should expect to take their research with them, the specific focus in the lab tends to shift every few years. Across topic areas however, work in the lab is united by a focus on the fundamental, underlying problem of induction: how we learn so much, from so little, so quickly. Computers today can learn from “big data” but humans have a remarkable ability to learn from very small amounts of data, just one or two examples -- and we can sometimes generate new ideas without any new evidence at all, just by thinking. We are interested in how human reasoning can go so far beyond the data.
Much of the work in the lab is informed by computational models of human cognition which add rigor and precision to experimental designs and allow us to test for nuanced, graded, effects. We try to use clear, simple, child-friendly behavioral experiments to answer complex questions; we have found this approach helpful across populations from infants to adults. However, the bread and butter work in the lab involves behavioral studies with typically developing children, ages 18-months to six. We run our experiments online through Children Helping Science and Lookit and -- thanks to our amazing collaborators at the Boston Children’s Museum -- in our in-person labs on the museum floor.
Learn About the Lab
How do babies learn so much from so little so quickly? In a fun, experiment-filled talk, cognitive scientist Laura Schulz shows how our young ones make decisions with a surprisingly strong sense of logic, well before they can talk.
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Meet the Team
Get to know the members of our lab
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View Our Partnerships
Learn about our partnerships
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Lab News
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Lab Values
Equity, Inclusion, Justice,
& Belonging
As a lab, we are committed to each other’s well-being and success. Our lab talks openly about issues of equity, inclusion, and social justice and we work together to nurture a welcoming culture where everyone can learn and thrive. We know we are working against a long and enduring legacy of exclusionary and hurtful practices in science. We try to educate ourselves about racism, sexism and other barriers to full participation in our field and listen to each other with curiosity, compassion and a willingness to make changes.
Diversity of race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, national origin, citizenship, disabilities (visible or invisible), neurodiversity, age, political views, family status, and sexual orientation makes our lab more resilient, more innovative, and wiser about issues central to cognition and human development broadly. We work to implement policies and practices that will make our lab more fair and inclusive. This includes recruiting broadly for all open positions of the lab; holistic review of all applications (e.g., GRE scores and the mere prestige of undergraduate programs are not factors); and flexible work hours and locations for anyone who needs accommodation.
I and many other members of the lab take an active role in community leadership, including joining BCS community of practice, engaging in self and peer education, advocacy within our lab, department, and institute, and taking an active role in outreach and mentoring. I see this work as augmenting, not distracting from, trainees’ scientific careers and actively support lab members’ efforts to make the culture of science more welcoming to everyone;. If you are a trainee interested in learning more, I encourage you to consider participating in our (free to graduate students and postdocs) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Badge in partnership with URI.
I also currently serve as Associate Department Head for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice and am committed to the community-crafted DEIJ strategic plan, here. If you have ideas about how we can improve the climate in our lab, field, department, institute, or community, please don’t hesitate to talk to me or to Farrah Belizaire the BCS Program Officer for DEIJ.
Work Life Balance
Our lab studies human development; we also value it. Your ability to do outstanding science should not depend on you minimizing your commitments to raising a family, caring for others, or caring for your own well-being. I work hard to create a flexible work environment, and will consistently support your ability to work remotely and in the hours that work best for you. Childcare is an issue especially dear to my heart and I will work hard to identify resources and solutions to make it possible for you to be both the scientist and parent you want to be.
Open, Accessible Science
We believe everyone benefits when science is as transparent and accessible as possible. We use the Open Science Framework to track all of our projects; we pre-register and replicate our studies as often as possible, and we share all our materials on publication. We also work to support field-wide collaborations to make science more accessible both to researchers and the general public. As part of this effort, we nurture museum/researcher partnerships through our longstanding collaboration with the Boston Children’s Museum and support a unified, discipline-wide Collaboration for Reproducible and Distributed Large-Scale Experiments (CRADLE) through efforts including Many Babies, Lookit, and Children Helping Science.
Mentorship
& Collegiality
We work on learning -- and believe in it. People enter the lab from a wide range of backgrounds and with a wide range of expertise and the diversity of experiences is core to the innovative work we do. We value humility and a sense of humor. Owning up to ignorance and error is the only way to correct it. We expect everyone to ask for help when they need it, and to offer help and advice with patience, empathy, and generosity. Explaining what you know to others as clearly as possible is one of the best ways to deepen your own understanding.
And I know that “life happens”. If you encounter difficulties during your training with family issues, physical or mental health issues, or finances, there are a number of resources at MIT that can provide support. If you are comfortable talking with me, know that your concerns will be met with compassion, flexibility, and as many creative solutions as we can collectively generate.