Welcome to the Childhood Cognition and Learning Laboratory!

The Childhood Cognition and Learning Laboratory began conducting research in the Fall of 2003 under the direction of Dr. Cristina Atance. We are a child psychology lab interested in learning more about how young children think. There are a variety of aspects of children’s thinking that interest us. For example, when do young children start to plan for, and think about, the future? How do these abilities change and develop over the preschool and early school years? Also, how do young children make sense of mental phenomena such as beliefs and desires? Because these mental phenomena are not readily visible, how do children come to discover that they are crucial to explaining and predicting human behaviour? To explore these different aspects of children’s thinking we conduct studies with children between the ages of 2 and 5.