Dr. Susan Birch

Dr. Birch’s overarching research goal is to more fully understand the development of social perspective taking, or ‘theory of mind’ broadly construed. In particular, she is interested in perspective-taking abilities across the lifespan: how do we reason about what someone else knows, feels, intends, etc. and how do these abilities impact other aspects of development? One line of research explores limitations in perspective-taking and the factors associated with these limitations (e.g., cognitive biases, source monitoring difficulties). A second line of research focuses on how children’s perspective-taking abilities influence what, and how, they learn from others. For example, how do they make inferences about who is a credible, or knowledgeable, source of information? A third line of investigation explores the relationships between different aspects of social perspective taking and social-emotional health and development.