Developmental Division

Broadly, my research explores the effect of language on children's reasoning about natural kinds, social categories, and psychological traits. Most of the projects in my lab focus on generic language -- that is, language that refers to categories (for example, "Boys like sports", "Tigers have stripes"). We investigate the effect of this type of language on how young children represent and use the information they learn from others. How does a child construe the information learned from a generic sentence (e.g., "Boys are good at math"), and how does this representation differ from that of the information conveyed in a non-generic sentence (e.g., "This boy is good at math")? In addition, we trace out the implications of the generic/non-generic distinction for children's achievement motivation -- to what extent does hearing others talk about ability in generic vs. non-generic terms affect (1) how children think about their own abilities, (2) how much they value effort and practice, and (3) how they cope with making mistakes?

Another line of research in my lab explores children's ability to understand generic sentences. Generics are peculiar because there is no simple rule by which to tell them apart from non-generic sentences -- no one-to-one mapping between generic meaning and a certain set of grammatical features. As a result, learners have to pay attention to and integrate a variety of cues -- in addition to the morphosyntactic cues present in the sentence, they must attend to extralinguistic cues such as the identity and knowledge state of the speaker, the context of the conversation, their previous knowledge of the world, etc. In our lab, we explore the range of information sources children are able to capitalize on at different ages for the task of distinguishing between generic and non-generic sentences.

I also have an interest in uncovering the broader mechanisms that support the rapid pace of word learning in the first few years of life. How do children represent the meaning of the words they learn? How do they extend these words to other objects, events, etc.? Is their learning guided by perceptually-based "rules of thumb" -- for example, things of the same shape have the same name? Or do even very young children understand that words refer to taxonomic categories (e.g., cookie) that crosscut perceptually-based categories (e.g., round things)?

NOTE: I am planning to recruit at least one graduate student for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Representative Publications:

• Cimpian, A., Gelman, S. A., & Brandone, A. C. (in press). Theory-based considerations influence the interpretation of generic sentences. Language and Cognitive Processes.
• Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2009). Information learned from generic language becomes central to children's biological concepts: Evidence from their open-ended explanations. Cognition, 113(1), 14-25.
• Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2008). Preschool children's use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition, 107(1), 19-53.
• Cimpian, A., Arce, H. C., Markman, E. M., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Subtle linguistic cues affect children's motivation. Psychological Science, 18(4), 314-316.
• Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2005). The absence of a shape bias in children's word learning. Developmental Psychology, 41(6), 1003-1019.

Classes Recently Taught:

• PSYC 216, Child Psychology (Fall 2008 - present)
• PSYC 462, Cognitive Development (Spring 2009, Spring 2010)
• PSYC 593, Language and Thought (Fall 2009)