Developmental Psychology

Studying the development of cognitive processes provides insight into fundamental questions about the organisation of the mind in both children and adults. For example, what skills are innate and what are learnt? What processes are disrupted in developmental disorders? Are there critical periods for acquiring certain cognitive skills?

The Developmental group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience uses a wide range of methods to study normal cognitive development and its disorders, in particular autism. The main focus of our research is social cognitive development, that is the development of the ability to understand others and self awareness.

Many of our methods overlap with other groups at the ICN, including neuropsychological tests, fMRI and TMS. We also use specially designed paper-and-pencil or computerised tests, and interviews for children, adolescents and adults. We also frequently interview the parents and teachers of the children we study. The main feature of our methods is that they are adapted to suit individuals of (almost) all ages and abilities. The ideal tasks are short and self-explanatory, attractive even for difficult-to-test children, and able to sustain their interest.

We are always developing new tasks to examine the cognitive processes we are investigating. For example, we have used 'spoonerisms', where you have to turn word pairs such as 'Chuck Berry' into 'Buck Cherry' to study children's and adults' abilities to manipulate speech sounds. Our studies of children and adults with autistic spectrum disorders use a range of tasks designed to tap mentalising abilities, that is, the ability to understand what other people want, feel, believe or know. The Sally-Ann task is a classic example of a mentalising test for children, and is shown below as a cartoon. More recently, we have developed videos of abstract shapes moving in ways which can either provoke a physical interpretation or a mentalising interpretation, and we can use these to measure spontaneous mentalising in both children and adults.

Developmental Psychology

This page last modified 17 November, 2011 by [ICN Web Team]