Sandra Waxman
Professor
Research Themes: The Communicating Mind and Body
As a developmental scientist, I consider human development, across ages and across cultures. Adopting a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, I focus on infants’ and young children’s concepts, words, and reasoning. I am also dedicated to building bridges across traditional disciplinary boundaries to focus on pressing issues facing young children and their families.
How (and how early) do infants link language and cognition? In my primary research lab, the Infant and Child Development Center, we consider the acquisition of two fundamental human capacities -- conceptual development and language development -- and the relation between them in infants and toddlers. We focus on these capacities throughout the first two years of life, beginning with infants as young as 3 months of age. Adopting a cross-linguistic developmental perspective, our research involves infants and young children acquiring a range of different languages, including English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French and Italian. We show that even before infants begin to speak, their language and cognitive advances are powerfully linked.
How do young children reason about the natural world? In this arena, we examine the role of culture and associated epistemological orientations in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world. Adopting a cross-cultural developmental approach, we consider how children learn about the natural world. What does it mean to be alive? What is the relation between humans and other living things? Together with colleagues at Northwestern, the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and in Native communities in the US, we examine learning in very young children from Native American and non-Native communities. We have shown that cultural differences in how we view the relation between humans and other living things is manifest not only in our knowledge and reasoning, but also in our practices and beliefs about what it means to be alive.
For fuller descriptions of my lab and developmental science at Northwestern, please see these links:
Infant and Child Development Center (Waxman infant lab)
Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci)
Harnessing the Power of Development to Improve Lives: Healthier, Earlier
