Mind and Morality Lab

Research Highlight: Sophia Visconte! Sophia is a sophomore studying English and Psychology with a tertiary focus in American Sign Language. She has been working with the Mind and Morality Lab for three semesters and counting, most recently as a Lead Research Assistant and through the UTRA program. Sophia is interested in the development of bias and discrimination in children. She hopes to better understand how, why, and when children learn discriminatory behaviors and how those behaviors can be minimized. Currently, Sophia is working on two projects with Dr. Vivian Liu in our lab. The first centers on the degree to which children reject or endorse harmful actions based on group membership, while the second explores how children perceive compensating workers for their output vs effort. Sophia looks forward to continuing to research and explore these complex and nuanced topics!

Scenes from the Mind and Morality Lab at the Cognitive Development Society (CDS) Conference! Last weekend, several members of the lab attended, presented, and spoke at the conference in Montreal. Here’s what they covered (in order of post images):

Amy Lu: S1.3 Drawing the moral circle: How children engage with diverse and expanding moral responsibilities
Sam Reisman: P2-134 Children use emotions to flexibly learn social norms
Virginia Cano: P2-132 Parents’ Moral Concern Shapes Children’s Moral Concern: Evidence for Socialization in the Development of Moral Expansiveness
Fia Boffey: P3-135 Cognitive Reflection Predicts Children’s Moral Concern

Not pictured:
Dr. Julia Marshall: WS6 Intuitive theories of care and protection in development

+ a bonus slide enjoying dinner!

RAs Karsten, Sophia, and Gabriela had a blast meeting interested students at the Lab Fair this week. M&M represent!

Curious about how to get your child involved in any one of our many paid studies? Swipe on to find out!

Meet Sam Reisman! Sam (she/her) is a fourth-year P.H.D. student, and graduate research assistant at the Mind and Morality Lab. Her research focuses on how children use other’s emotions when making social decisions. Sam also has pet dog, and her favorite vacation was cave diving with sharks in Australia!

Meet Rui (she/her). She is a first-year graduate student in the Mind and Morality Lab. In general, she studies children’s social and moral cognition. She is interested in understanding the underlying social-cognitive mechanisms that explain how and why humans cooperate.

Meet Siya (she/ her), she is a junior at The Wheeler School, planning to double major in Neurobiology and Philosophy. She’s fascinated by what our questions about reality reveal about us, with broader interests in consciousness, metaphysics, the neuroscience of food, and the neurobiology of imagination and emotion.

At school, she conducts research in the neuroscience lab—on topics from movement and personality, phone usage, the trends of media consumption across time periods—and leads the neuroscience club.

At the M&M Lab, Siya is excited to gain insight into how elementary students form identity and comprehend the roles of themselves and others in different spaces. She’s especially interested in innovative study design and applying what she learns to her TRIS project, which builds cultural confidence and awareness in young students.

Outside the lab, you’ll find her dancing with her multicultural team, recreating Instagram recipes, or watching murder mysteries with her mom.

Looking to join our team? Click the link in our bio!