Current Research

Conventional vs. Privileged Information:   Young children are exceptional learners of conventional information such as the names of objects and rules of games.  However not all information is conventional in the sense that it is known by or can be shared with others.  We are currently studying 3- to 6-year-olds’ judgments about what information can be shared with others, how children evaluate others who appropriately or inappropriately share information with others, and the cues children use to determine if information is privileged or conventional.

Language-Based Social Preferences:  Recent research has shown that children prefer others who speak their own language or with their own accent to others who do not.   We are currently investigating differences in language based social preferences among bilingual and monolingual children. We are also examining if children treat different aspects of dialect similarly to accent in regards to evaluating others.