Schedule

Published

October 15, 2025

Modified

October 15, 2025

ImportantAccess to readings

Please try to retrieve readings from the library, using the citation and links in the schedule below. Doing so gives the library a more accurate count of article and book usage, and that helps in negotiations with publishers. If

Some readings will not be readily available. I am working my way through the reading list to make PDFs of these available via Canvas. So, please bear with me. The Canvas folder is here.

Note

Karen Adolph shared the graduate cognitive development syllabus they used with NYU graduate students in Spring 2025. I have adopted considerable portions of their readings and assignment ideas.

Week 01

Friday, August 29, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Introduction to the course
  • The cognitive sensibility
  • General Readings: Siegler & Alibali (2021) Chapters 1 & 3; Bayne et al. (2019); Simmering, Triesch, Deák, & Spencer (2010); Ritter, Baxter, & Churchill (2014) Chapter 11
  • Slides: | html |

Assignment

  • Complete presentation preference survey. (Sign-in with your PSU access ID, e.g., rog1).

Week 02

Friday, September 5, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Theoretical foundations: Piaget

Week 03

Friday, September 12, 2025

Topics

  • Piaget: Deep dive
    • Student presentation A: How robust is the evidence for Piaget’s trajectories? (Presenter: Alyssa Swift; Discussant: Jingyi He)
    • Student presentation B: When does object permanence emerge? (Presenter: Makenna Luzenski; Discussant: Zeynep Sülün)
      • Read: R. Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman (1985); Renée Baillargeon (2008)

Week 04

Friday, September 19, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Nativism, core knowlege, and its discontents
    • General Readings: Spelke & Kinzler (2007); Spencer, Blumberg, et al. (2009); Spelke & Kinzler (2009); Landau (2009); Spencer, Samuelson, et al. (2009)
    • Slides: | html |

Week 05

Friday, September 26, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Nativism and Core Knowledge: Deep dive
    • Student Presentation C: How does changing the task inform on the underlying construct(s) about physical knowledge? (Presenter: Carlos Almeida; Discussant: Yeonjin Kim)
      • Read: Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson (1992); Hood, Carey, & Prasada (2000); Keen (2003)
    • Student Presentation D: Rich interpretation of group differences in infant looking-time paradigms: How rich is dangerous? Necessary? Productive? (Presenter: Suzy Su; Discussant: Makenna Luzeknski)

Week 06

Friday, October 3, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Constructivism & its variants
    • General Readings: Newcombe (2011b); Mareschal (2011); Spencer & Buss (2011); Newcombe (2011a)
    • Slides: | html |

Week 07

Friday, October 10, 2025

  • Constructivism: Deep dive
    • Student Presentation E: How do developmental disorders inform our understanding of cognitive development? (Presenter: Katie Billetdeaux; Discussant: Pratt Srinivasan)
      • Read: A. Karmiloff-Smith (1998); Annette Karmiloff-Smith (2009)

Week 08

Friday, October 17, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Student Presentation F: The risks of generalization (Presenter: Gilmore; Discussant: Carlos Almeida)
    • Read: Packer & Moreno-Dulcey (2022); Kominsky, Lucca, Thomas, Frank, & Hamlin (2022); Lucca et al. (2025)
    • Supplemental: Constructivism
  • Emergentism & dynamic systems
    • General Readings: Thelen & Bates (2003); Perone & Simmering (2017); @Thelen & Smith (1998) (optional)
    • Supplemental: Lorenz System
  • Slides: | html |

Week 09

Friday, October 24, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Emergentism & dynamic systems: Deep dive
    • Student Presentation G: A connectionist model to explain why infants seem so smart
      • Read: Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, & Siegler (1997) (Presenter: Zeynep Sülün; Discussant: Caesar Liu)
    • Student Presentation H: Emergentism and variants of the A-not-B task
      • Read: Smith, Thelen, Titzer, & McLin (1999) (Presenter: Natalie Byrd; Discussant: Jiayi Fan)

Week 10

Friday, October 31, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Embodied cognition
    • General Readings: Pfeifer & Bongard (2006); Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, & Yu (2018)
  • Student Presentation I: Does development gate input to prevent a “blooming, buzzing confusion?” (Presenter Luke Debec: Discussant: Alyssa Swift)
    • Read: Kretch, Franchak, & Adolph (2014); Franchak, Kretch, & Adolph (2018)
  • Student Presentation J: How AI & robotics inform developmental science? (Presenter: Pratt Srinivasan; Discussant: Hannah Huang)
    • Read: Ossmy et al. (2018); Ossmy et al. (2024)

Week 11

Friday, November 7, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Sociocultural development
    • Read: Siegler & Alibali (2021) Chapter 4; Tomasello (2016)

Week 12

Friday, November 14, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Sociocultural development: Deep dive
    • Student Presentation K: Imitation in cultural learning (Presenter: Hanna Huang; Discussant: TBD)
      • Read: Legare & Nielsen (2015); Herrmann, Legare, Harris, & Whitehouse (2013); Lyons, Young, & Keil (2007)
    • Student Presentation L: Gesture (Presenter: Jingyi He; Discusant: Katie Billedetdeaux)
      • Read: Novack, Goldin-Meadow, & Woodward (2015); Wakefield, Novack, Congdon, Franconeri, & Goldin-Meadow (2018)

Week 13

Friday, November 21, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Learning from others
    • General Readings: S. A. Gelman (2009); Sobel & Kushnir (2013)
    • Student Presentation M: Learning from testimony (Presenter: TBD; Discussant: Luke Debec)
      • Read: Harris, Koenig, Corriveau, & Jaswal (2018); Jaswal (2010)

Thanksgiving Break

NO CLASS

Week 14

Friday, December 5, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Conceptual development
    • General Readings: Siegler & Alibali (2021) Chapter 8; Mandler (1992)
    • Student Presentation N: Naive psychology (Presenter: Jiayi Fan : Discussant: Suzy Su)
      • Read: Onishi & Baillargeon (2005); Wellman (2012); Ding, Wellman, Wang, Fu, & Lee (2015)

Week 15

Friday, December 12, 2025

Topics & Readings

  • Systems
    • Read: Bronfenbrenner (1977), Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray (2001), Hartley (2022)
    • Student Presentation O: Poverty is bad for cognition. (Presenter: Yeonjin Kim; Discussant: TBD)
      • Read: Taylor, Cooper, Jackson, & Barch (2020); Amso (2020)
    • Student Presentation P: Poverty can be adaptive for cognition. (Presenter: Caesar Liu; Discussant: Natalie Byrd)
      • Read: Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, & Nettle (2016); Frankenhuis, Vries, Bianchi, & Ellis (2020)

References

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Baillargeon, Renée. (2008). Innate ideas revisited: For a principle of persistence in infants’ physical reasoning. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 3, 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00056.x
Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E. S., & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object permanence in five-month-old infants. Cognition, 20, 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90008-3
Bayne, T., Brainard, D., Byrne, R. W., Chittka, L., Clayton, N., Heyes, C., … Webb, B. (2019). What is cognition? Current Biology: CB, 29, R608–R615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.044
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. The American Psychologist, 32, 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.32.7.513
Ding, X. P., Wellman, H. M., Wang, Y., Fu, G., & Lee, K. (2015). Theory-of-mind training causes honest young children to lie. Psychological Science, 26, 1812–1821. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615604628
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Franchak, J. M., Kretch, K. S., & Adolph, K. E. (2018). See and be seen: Infant-caregiver social looking during locomotor free play. Developmental Science, 21, e12626. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12626
Frankenhuis, W. E., Panchanathan, K., & Nettle, D. (2016). Cognition in harsh and unpredictable environments. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 76–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.08.011
Frankenhuis, W. E., Vries, S. A. de, Bianchi, J., & Ellis, B. J. (2020). Hidden talents in harsh conditions? A preregistered study of memory and reasoning about social dominance. Developmental Science, 23, e12835. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12835
Gelman, R. (1972). Logical capacity of very young children: Number invariance rules. Child Development, 43, 75. https://doi.org/10.2307/1127873
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Harris, P. L., Koenig, M. A., Corriveau, K. H., & Jaswal, V. K. (2018). Cognitive foundations of learning from testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 251–273. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011710
Hartley, C. A. (2022). How do natural environments shape adaptive cognition across the lifespan? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26, 1029–1030. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.10.002
Herrmann, P. A., Legare, C. H., Harris, P. L., & Whitehouse, H. (2013). Stick to the script: The effect of witnessing multiple actors on children’s imitation. Cognition, 129, 536–543. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.010
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Jaswal, V. K. (2010). Believing what you’re told: Young children’s trust in unexpected testimony about the physical world. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 248–272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.06.002
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1998). Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 389–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01230-3
Karmiloff-Smith, Annette. (2009). Preaching to the converted? From constructivism to neuroconstructivism. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 99–102. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2009.00086.x
Keen, R. (2003). Representation of objects and events: Why do infants look so smart and toddlers look so dumb? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 79–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.01234
Kominsky, J. F., Lucca, K., Thomas, A. J., Frank, M. C., & Hamlin, J. K. (2022). Simplicity and validity in infant research. Cognitive Development, 63, 101213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101213
Kretch, K. S., Franchak, J. M., & Adolph, K. E. (2014). Crawling and walking infants see the world differently. Child Development, 85, 1503–1518. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12206
Landau, B. (2009). The importance of the nativist–empiricist debate: Thinking about primitives without primitive thinking. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 88–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2009.00082.x
Legare, C. H., & Nielsen, M. (2015). Imitation and innovation: The dual engines of cultural learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 688–699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.005
Lucca, K., Yuen, F., Wang, Y., Alessandroni, N., Allison, O., Alvarez, M., … Hamlin, J. K. (2025). Infants’ social evaluation of helpers and hinderers: A large-scale, multi-lab, coordinated replication study. Developmental Science, 28, e13581. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13581
Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G., & Keil, F. C. (2007). The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 19751–19756. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0704452104
Mandler, J. M. (1992). How to build a baby: II. Conceptual primitives. Psychological Review, 99, 587–604. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.99.4.587
Mareschal, D. (2011). From NEOconstructivism to NEUROconstructivism. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 169–170. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00185.x
Munakata, Y., McClelland, J. L., Johnson, M. H., & Siegler, R. S. (1997). Rethinking infant knowledge: Toward an adaptive process account of successes and failures in object permanence tasks. Psychological Review, 104, 686–713. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.104.4.686
Newcombe, N. S. (2011a). Three families of isms. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 171–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00198.x
Newcombe, N. S. (2011b). What is neoconstructivism?: neoconstructivism. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 157–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00180.x
Newcombe, N. S. (2013). Cognitive development: Changing views of cognitive change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science, 4, 479–491. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1245
Novack, M. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Woodward, A. L. (2015). Learning from gesture: How early does it happen? Cognition, 142, 138–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.05.018
Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science (New York, N.Y.), 308, 255–258. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1107621
Ossmy, O., Han, D., MacAlpine, P., Hoch, J., Stone, P., & Adolph, K. E. (2024). Walking and falling: Using robot simulations to model the role of errors in infant walking. Developmental Science, 27, e13449. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13449
Ossmy, O., Hoch, J. E., MacAlpine, P., Hasan, S., Stone, P., & Adolph, K. E. (2018). Variety wins: Soccer-playing robots and infant walking. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 12, 19. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2018.00019
Oyama, S., Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (2001). Cycles of contingency: Developmental systems and evolution. Xii, 377. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-06709-000
Packer, M. J., & Moreno-Dulcey, F. A. (2022). Theory of puppets?: A critique of the use of puppets as stimulus materials in psychological research with young children. Cognitive Development, 61, 101146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101146
Paulus, M. (2022). Should infant psychology rely on the violation‐of‐expectation method? Not anymore. Infant and Child Development, 31. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2306
Perone, S., & Simmering, V. R. (2017). Applications of dynamic systems theory to cognition and development: New frontiers. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 52, 43–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2016.10.002
Pfeifer, R., & Bongard, J. (2006). How the body shapes the way we think: A new view of intelligence. MIT Press. Retrieved from https://market.android.com/details?id=book-EHPMv9MfgWwC
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Sobel, D. M., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Knowledge matters: How children evaluate the reliability of testimony as a process of rational inference. Psychological Review, 120, 779–797. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034191
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Spelke, E. S., & Kinzler, K. D. (2009). Innateness, learning, and rationality. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 96–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2009.00085.x
Spencer, J. P., Blumberg, M. S., McMurray, B., Robinson, S. R., Samuelson, L. K., & Bruce Tomblin, J. (2009). Short arms and talking eggs: Why we should no longer abide the Nativist–Empiricist debate. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 79–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2009.00081.x
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