Matthew Fisher

"Broadly, my research looks at how people make sense of a complex world. I am examining how people go about engaging in argumentation, the impact of expert opinion in these settings, and factors that can create an illusion of understanding. I am also interested in how normal human cognition can use new technology as a cognitive prosthesis. I look at these topics in adults as well as how they change over development." Matt can be reached at matthew.fisher@yale.edu.

Jonathan Kominsky

"My research looks at how children and adults perceive and understand the multitudes of causal systems they encounter in day-to-day life. In the Cognition and Development lab I focus on how laypeople make sense of complex causal systems (e.g., cars or computers), even when they lack deep mechanical understanding. I am also interested in the tools and heuristics adults use to think about complex causal relationships, and how they might develop over middle childhood." Jonathan can be reached at jonathan.kominsky@yale.edu.

Mark Sheskin

"My research interests are at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. In the Cognition and Development lab, my studies focus on how children and adults come to prefer and learn from scientific explanations that vary in generality. In other labs, I work with kids and monkeys to determine the foundation of adult human moral reasoning." His website can be found here and he can be reached at mark.sheskin@yale.edu.

Brent Strickland

"'Core cognition' refers to the set of early emerging cognitive structures that form a foundation for later learning. It includes primitive representations of entities like physical objects, number, beliefs, intentions and moral actions. Core cognition is typically studied in pre-verbal infants, but it is easy to forget that even after it has fulfilled its initial bootstrapping function, core cognition continues to operate into adulthood. My research program examines this often-neglected aspect of core cognition by studying how it interacts with mental faculties like vision and language. I argue that core cognition is part of the computational currency of these faculties and thus automatically and unconsciously guides their performance throughout adulthood." He can be reached at brent.strickland@yale.edu.