Children's Representational Development Lab

I am interested in better understanding young children's (four- to six-year-old's) future-oriented cognition, specifically in regards to their ability to save for the future. Currently, little is known about how future-oriented skills relate (e.g., saving, prospective memory, planning), and little is known about how future-oriented skills relate to other cognitive skills (e.g., executive functions).  Additionally, I am interested in how temporal cognition (i.e., thinking about time) affects one's ability to save a limited resource for the future. My current research interests focus on understanding if future-oriented cognition, namely saving, is related to temporal cognition, and if training temporal cognition can improve saving ability over time. 

Our lab is also interested in understanding moral evaluations and young children's understanding of intentions and language use (e.g., looking at understanding of intention with morally relevant words such as hide and steal). Further, we are interested in understanding theory of mind and metacognition, in addition to how preschooler's knowledge changes over time.