Research: Cognitive and Developmental Psychology

Professor Halberda's lab focuses on two main topics. The first is an interest in language acquisition and the possibility that logical deductive inference may play a role in the learning of new words. Working with infants, children, and adults, students in the lab receive training in eye-tracking and classic anticipatory-looking paradigms with a possible focus in the development of logical reasoning abilities broadly construed or in the constraints that guide word-learning. The second topic area is an interest in the organization of attention and the connection of mind to world. How do we take the continuous information that we receive from the senses and construct a representation of the world that is filled with discrete individual objects? Students in the lab have utilized both empirical methods (change detection, multiple object tracking) and computational modeling (symbolic and connectionist) to understand how attention may play a role in this process. Students are encouraged to form both broad and deep collaborations with other labs (Prof. Feigenson etc.) which are happily supported.

Lab for Child Development

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The Vision and Cognition Lab

221 Ames Hall
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: 410-516-7364
Fax: 410-516-4478