Imagination & Cognition Lab

The Imagination and Cognition Lab is an individual lab located within the Children’s Research Center (CRC). The CRC is affiliated with the Department of Psychology and conducts research on child development. Research in the Imagination and Cognition Lab focuses on children’s conceptual development, including topics such as their perceptions of reality and possibility, the role of testimony in children’s beliefs, and the development of scientific and supernatural reasoning. In our research on children’s reality status judgments, we focus on characteristics of the stimuli (e.g., the properties or traits of an entity), characteristics of the child (e.g., fantasy orientation), and environmental factors (e.g., societal and cultural encouragement to believe).