I'm interested in the origins of logical concepts and logical reasoning. What kinds of abstract, domain-general operations can young children perform on their mental representations? When do these operations first emerge in development, and do they change qualitatively as we learn language? Do infants' initial logical resources differ from those of other animals?

I'm currently working with Susan Carey, looking at the early logical abilities of infants and young children. My research uses interactive tasks to ask questions like "when do infants begin to act based on negative information, like the ball's not in that bucket and that block does not make it go? and "when young children see the premises A or B and not A, do they come to the conclusion therefore B?". I'm also looking at toddlers' comprehension of logical operators in language like "and", "or", and "not", as well as infants' use of the concepts "same" and "different".