Young children’s social cognition and learning in an increasingly technological world

Abstract

In our current world, children are interacting with technologies that look, talk, and act like social agents. Are children willing to treat such technologies as they do humans agents, as if they possess thoughts, feelings, experiences, and even moral status? What are the implications for learning in early childhood, which depends on evolutionarily ancient mechanisms of trust and cooperation? In this talk I will present some recent work from our lab that explores these questions. I’ll discuss implications of these findings for early learning, and possible generational changes that may have lasting effects as our modern children become adults.

About the Speaker

Dr. Tamar Kushnir is a Professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, and the director of the Early Childhood Cognition Laboratory. She received her M.A. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, and was previously on the faculty in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University. Kushnir’s research examines learning and conceptual change in young children with a focus on social learning and social cognition.