Congratulations to Professor Daniel Ansari, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, who has been recognized as the recipient of the 2026 Pickering Award for Outstanding Contribution to Developmental Psychology in Canada. https://ow.ly/Lxyc50Z5jRW

Professor Daniel Ansari recognized for contributions to developmental psychology

Professor Daniel Ansari has been recognized as the recipient of the 2026 Pickering Award for Outstanding Contribution to Developmental Psychology in Canada.

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Using books to improve mental rotation skills with 4- and 5-year-old children

Mental rotation skills predict later achievement in STEM, and prior research shows that children's mental rotation skills improve after training. Howe…

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Early experiences with number matter! Hearing more number words @ 1 & 2 predicts better math skills @ 4.5. This holds across language & ethnicity. Importantly, children are sensitive to specific inputs: 1 & 2yos benefit most from small numbers & cardinal values. authors.elsevier.com/a/1n7N-3irP4...

🚨New publication! This is a very cool one. Based on Suppanut Sriutaisuk's dissertation, we looked at self-perceptions and stereotypes of girls and boys' interest and ability in math using latent profile analyses. @aera-motsig.bsky.social @aeradivc.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Latent profile analysis of adolescents’ gender stereotypes and self-perceptions in math

Increasing the number of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields remains an important educational goal. Gender ste…

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Our *Monster paper* is finally out. Begun instead of data collection during covid for Melis's PhD, expanded during Jenni's PhD, & finally now published. Some papers are worth the wait onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Capturing Joint Attention: Theoretical Foundations and Their Implications for the Link Between Joint Attention and Vocabulary Growth

Despite decades of research, we still know less than we would like about the association between joint attention (JA) and language acquisition. One reason for this is that we still have not agreed ho...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

📣📣 A recent paper by Marie Krenger & Catherine Thevenot in JCD: "Finger Counting Is Not a Dead End: Early Finger Use as a Marker of Arithmetic Development." Results show that finger counting scaffolds the acquisition of more advanced mental arithmetic strategies. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Finger Counting Is Not a Dead End: Early Finger Use as a Marker of Arithmetic Development

Finger counting is recognized as a valuable tool that supports young children in performing arithmetic tasks. However, concerns have been raised about whether this practice traps children in immatu...

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New paper alert! tinyurl.com/bdec5rd5 We used eye-tracking, pupillometry, and behavioral methods to explore how spatial information interacts with memory for temporal order. Our results suggest that the mental timeline can be an effective memory strategy. Let us know what you think!

The mental timeline is used as a memory strategy

Remembering the temporal context of events is difficult across the lifespan. Across many cultures and languages, people get around this problem by gro…

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New study led by our PhD student Begüm Yılmaz! @begumyilmaz.bsky.social @dilaykaradoller.bsky.social Müge Caferoğlu @tilbegoksun.bsky.social @ecedemirlira.bsky.social "Parental gestural math input and children's math skills: An intervention study" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So excited for my first #CDS2026 conference! Come stop by my poster - I’d love to chat about math, space and children👀

Language, Cognition, & Development Lab @ UW@lcdlab-uw.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Come check out our lab's research this week at @cogdevsoc.bsky.social! ✨

Is mental imagery a single process? Our meta-analysis of 46 fMRI studies suggests not. We find a key divide between object imagery (visualizing an object in rich detail) and spatial imagery (mentally transforming objects). This split mirrors the ventral and dorsal streams of vision

New study led by our PhD student Begüm Yılmaz! @begumyilmaz.bsky.social @sultankarakas.bsky.social @tilbegoksun.bsky.social @ecedemirlira.bsky.social "The Links Between Spatial and Math Skills in Preterm and Full-Term Children" @tandfresearch.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3PWR7...

The Links Between Spatial and Math Skills in Preterm and Full-Term Children

The current study investigated the link between subdomains of spatial and math skills in preschool-aged full-term and preterm-born children. We assessed 238 English-speaking children living in the ...

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Are you studying underlying mechanisms? I recently started and struggled with what exactly a mechanism was and how to research it. I wrote a theoretical statement aiming to clarify how we conceptualise mechanisms, which is now in press @ Journal of Numerical Cognition doi.org/10.23668/psy...

Declan Devlin@declankdevlin.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I like this paper by @coolenilse.bsky.social www.psycharchives.org/en/item/9754...

We plan to hire a post doc to start in Fall 2026 (flexible), in the Aulet Lab at UMass Amherst, funded for two years. The postdoc will help establish our developmental fMRI research program studying symbolic number acquisition in 4-8 year old children (among other things!).

New research from #FIU highlighted in #BOLDblog @jacobsfoundation.bsky.social boldscience.org/how-do-child...

How do children develop spatial reasoning?

Children, like adults, use one of two strategies to solve mental rotation problems

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📣📣 A recent paper by Emily K Farran et al. in JCD: "Deconstructing Block Building Behaviours in 7- to 9-year-olds; Associations with Spatial and Mathematics Performance" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Deconstructing Block Building Behaviours in 7- to 9-year-olds; Associations with Spatial and Mathematics Performance

Block construction performance is related to mathematics and block construction training leads to improvement in mathematics. However, block construction is a complex task, and it is unknown which ...

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It never ends (you’ll see): another paper from @urvi.bsky.social this time on how language structure impacts children’s intuition that numbers are infinite (see?)!

Urvi Maheshwari ツ@urvi.bsky.social · 6mo ago

By age 6, many children in the US believe that numbers are infinite, despite initially representing counting as a meaningless & finite chain of words. In a new paper w/ Jess Sullivan & @drbarner.bsky.social, we explored the basis for this conceptual change. 1/n www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I'm delighted to share this interesting work, a wonderful collaboration with colleagues based in the Canary Islands. ☀️ Acta Psychol. 2026 [https://lnkd.in/e3Q_xQ-H]. #MathAnxiety #MathEd #MathTeacher #CogSci #Edusky #DevPsy @mclstrainee.bsky.social @mcls-official.bsky.social @ioe.bsky.social

Share link to new article from our early fraction understanding project-- www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Profiles of fraction knowledge in first grade and their relation to cognitive and mathematical skills

Latent profile analysis was used to examine variation in early fraction knowledge among first graders (N = 204; Mage = 6.68 years) across nonsymbolic …

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Structural Alignment and Linguistic Contrast Help Children Learn a Key Principle of Spatial Construction - Zheng - 2025 - Cognitive Science - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Structural Alignment and Linguistic Contrast Help Children Learn a Key Principle of Spatial Construction

Spatial representation and reasoning are important in cognition, yet they are challenging for children. Research has shown that comparison can support learning about common spatial structure and that...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Last week, we were delighted to host Dr. Can Çarkoğlu, a former undergraduate assistant in our lab. He presented his doctoral research at Purdue University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago!

I'm planning to organize a symposium at #MCLS2026 on the (longitudinal) associations between spatial ability (e.g., mental rotation) and math in preschoolers, if you'd like to join or know anyone who might be interested let me know! @mclstrainee.bsky.social @mcls-official.bsky.social

New paper alert! We examined the effects of a teacher-delivered quantitative language intervention. In just 3 weeks, dual-language learners improved in their quantitative language skills. It was a privilege to work with such a great team! Free access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hello #MCLS2026, Padua, Italy! 🇮🇹 This is the moment to find international researchers to compose your #symposium. The call for submissions will open in November! 🎯 Registration will open by mid-January. Check @mcls-official.bsky.social and @mclstrainee.bsky.social for updates.

Such a pleasure to work with @boldinsights.bsky.social to put this piece together. Always happy to discuss the role of spatial thinking in STEM learning and beyond

BOLD@boldinsights.bsky.social · 11mo ago

“Spatial thinking is a fundamental, yet often neglected, aspect of human cognition.” @zackhawes.bsky.social tells Aisha Schnellmann how central spatial thinking is to STEM learning. #EdChat boldscience.org/the-psycholo...

New paper with @euniceyiu.bsky.social both a theoretical account of how empowerment in RL could lead to causal learning and some lovely experiments showing that children do just that.

Eunice Yiu@euniceyiu.bsky.social · last yr.

Children & adults don't just explore—they seek empowerment: controllable and variable interventions. This intrinsic drive supports causal learning & generalization. 📄 Forthcoming in Phil. Trans. A (2026): osf.io/ept4n/download With @alisongopnik.bsky.social, @shiryginosar.bsky.social & Kelsey Allen

Training children's spatial skills improves their maths performance, research shows – and here are 6 ways teachers can do that

How to boost children’s spatial skills – and their maths performance

Training children’s spatial abilities improves maths performance, studies show – and new research from the University of Surrey identifies practical teaching methods to do just that

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✨New publication✨ #MathActivities on #SocialMedia: Examining content, design, and alignment with mathematical cognition research doi.org/10.1016/j.ec... with Juyun Lee and Eric Dearing @ericdearing.bsky.social

Sharing my recent pub with the bsky community! The Factor Structure of Parents' Math-Related Talk and Its Relation to Children's Early Academic Skills doi.org/10.1111/cdev...

<em>Child Development</em> | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library

This study, involving 120 children (Mage = 4.25; SD = 0.83; 53% Female, 49% White, 23% multiracial, 16% Black, 9% Asian American, and 3% Latine) and their parents, examined parent talk constructs and....

doi.org

New paper alert: “From language to mathematics and vice versa?: A longitudinal study on the associations between preschoolers' mathematical language and mathematical abilities” with a wonderful team @bertdesmedt.bsky.social 🥳 Access here ➡️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From language to mathematics and vice versa?: A longitudinal study on the associations between preschoolers' mathematical language and mathematical abilities

Mathematical language, such as quantitative (e.g., few) and spatial (e.g., after) terms, is critical for mathematical development. However, studies of…

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Come check out our lab's research this week at @srcdorg.bsky.social! ✨