Elizabeth Spelke

Elizabeth Spelke
Elizabeth
Spelke
Investigator
Department:  Psychology

Associated Research Module: 

Associated Research Thrust: 

Prof. Spelke is the director of Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Harvard University.

Room:  1130 William James Hall
Phone:  (617) 495-3876

Current Advisees

Caitlin Connolly - Research Assistant
Rhea Howard - Graduate Student
Shari Liu - Postdoc
Bill Pepe - Research Assistant
Ashley Thomas - Postdoc
Emily Walco - Graduate Student
Brandon Woo - Graduate Student

Past Advisees

Narges Ashfordi - Graduate Student
You-Jung Choi - Postdoc
Moira (Molly) Dillon - Graduate Student
Rosa Guzman - Lab Manager
Natasha Kalra - Lab Manager
Young-eun Lee - Graduate Student
Adrian Maries - Research Fellow
Annie Spokes - Graduate Student
Heather Tarr - Research Assistant

Projects

CBMM Publications

K. A. Smith, Mei, L., Yao, S., Wu, J., Spelke, E. S., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Ullman, T. D., The fine structure of surprise in intuitive physics: when, why, and how much?, in Proceedings of the 42th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020, virtual, July 29 - August 1, 2020, 2020.
A. J. Thomas, Saxe, R., and Spelke, E. S., Infants represent 'like-kin' affiliation , in Budapest Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary, 2020.
C. I. Calero, Shalom, D. E., Spelke, E. S., and Sigman, M., Language, gesture, and judgment: Children’s paths to abstract geometry, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 177, pp. 70 - 85, 2019.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., Four-year-old children favor kin when the stakes are higher, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) . Portland, OR, 2017.
A. C. Spokes, Venkatesan, T., and Spelke, E. S., Five-month-old infants attend to responsive caregivers, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Portland, OR, 2017.
S. Liu, Ullman, T., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., Ten-month-old infants infer value from effort, Society for Research in Child Development. 2017.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., Children’s Expectations and Understanding of Kinship as a Social Category, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 440, pp. 1664-1078, 2016.
E. S. Spelke, Sternberg, R. J., Fiske, S. T., and Foss, D. J., Cognitive abilities of infants, in Scientists Making a Difference: One Hundred Eminent Behavioral and Brain Scientists Talk about Their Most Important Contributions, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
E. S. Spelke, Barner, D., and Baron, A. S., Core knowledge and conceptual change: A perspective on social cognition, in Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
S. Liu and Spelke, E. S., Continuous representations of action efficiency in infancy, CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD16). 2016.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., The Functions of Infants’ Social Categorization: Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks, in International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016.
S. Liu, Brooks, N. B., and Spelke, E. S., Pre-reaching infants expect causal agents to act efficiently without motor training, 20th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS). 2016.
H. L. Kosakowski, Powell, L. J., and Spelke, E. S., Preverbal Infants' Third-Party Imitator Preferences: Animated Displays versus Filmed Actors, International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS). New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks, in International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), New Orleans, LA, 2016.
A. C. Spokes, How Infants Reason About Affective States and Social Interactions, International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) . New Orleans, Louisiana , 2016.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., Connecting core cognition, spatial symbols, and the abstract concepts of formal geometry., in Cognitive Development Society Post-Conference, More on Development, 2015.
M. R. Dillon, Pires, A. C., Hyde, D. C., and Spelke, E. S., Children's expectations about training the approximate number system., British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 33, no. 4, 2015.
M. R. Dillon, Izard, V., and Spelke, E. S., Infants’ sensitivity to shape changes., Cognitive Development Society Pre-Conference on the Development of Spatial Thinking. 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions., Biennial Meeting of Cognitive Development Society. 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., Reorientation ability predicts early spatial symbol reading, in 2015 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, 2015.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). 2015.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., Early reasoning about affiliation and kinship.. Poster presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA, 2015.
S. Liu and Spelke, E. S., Six-month-old infants represent action efficiency on a continuous scale., 9th Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Columbus, Ohio, 2015.
A. C. Spokes, Infants’ Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) | More on Development workshop. Columbus, Ohio, 2015.
L. J. Powell and Spelke, E. S., Infants’ Categorization of Social Actions, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Columbus, OH, 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) . Columbus, OH, 2015.
A. C. Spokes, Infants’ Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) Biennial Meeting. 2015.
G. Dehaene-Lambertz and Spelke, E. S., The Infancy of the Human Brain, Neuron, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 93 - 109, 2015.
H. L. Kosakowski, Powell, L. J., and Spelke, E. S., Imitation Preferences of Preverbal Infants., CBMM Summer Research Program. Poster presentation at the Center for Brain Minds and Machines Summer Conference, Cambridge, MA, 2014.
M. R. Dillon, Huang, Y., and Spelke, E. S., Core foundations of abstract geometry, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 110, no. 35, 2013.