Doctoral Student
University of Toronto
How do biases shape how we seek and remember information, and how we interact with others across the lifespan? How do we selectively form and revise beliefs based on others' testimony? How do we interpret others' testimony? Are there cross-cultural differences in the development of social learning and reasoning? These questions constitute the focus of my research interests, whose overarching theme is the development of human social learning and reasoning.
In this line of research, I examine biases, such as myside/confirmation bias and positivity bias, in seeking, remembering, and offering evidence. I investigate whether the presence and degree of these biases depend on our informational goals. I also explore whether and how these tendencies change across the lifespan.
This line of work focuses on whether and how speakers of different languages differ in how they evaluate others' testimony, revise their beliefs, and engage in argumentation with others. For example, in Turkish, it is grammatically obligatory to express how information was acquired (whether the speaker is reporting direct observation or hearsay), while it is not obligatory in English. I investigate whether this type of linguistic cues facilitates young children’s reasoning in evaluating and talking about the reliability of testimony, and revising beliefs.
Sometimes, others’ testimony is ambiguous, or it may not reflect their true beliefs and desires. In this line of research, I examine how children and adults make inferences about others' mental states by using additional cues such as the speakers' history, their social interactions, and dis/agreement with others.