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We live in a world rich with causal structure. Events do not just occur randomly around us, they result from causal relationships such as rain falling resulting in a slippery ground, or flipping a switch to make the light turn on. As children grow up a major challenge they face is uncovering the world’s causal structure, including understanding the causes and consequences of other people’s behaviour. How do children learn these kinds of causal relationships, especially when the world presents them with sparse, ambiguous data or with multiple, conflicting sources of evidence? Are these sophisticated abilities unique to humans, or are they shared with other animals?

Our lab aims to use experimental and computational techniques to understand the causal and social reasoning abilities of humans and nonhuman animals (specifically dogs). By focusing on social and causal learning, we can address one of the core questions of cognition: How do humans construct sophisticated representations from relatively simple percepts, and how do these cognitive abilities develop?

We investigate dog’s learning in a variety of contexts including dogs’ physical problem-solving abilities (e.g., how to get treats out of puzzles) and their understanding of social information (e.g., following a pointing gesture or learning from a demonstration). Our research takes the form of short, interactive games and training exercises that are designed to be fun and engaging to dogs.

We investigate children’s learning in a variety of contexts including children’s understanding of physical causation (e.g., what makes a toy activate) and social/psychological causation (e.g., why people behave in certain ways). Our research takes the form of short, interactive games that are designed to be fun and engaging to young children.

Recent Lab News

Anwyn Gatesy-Davis Begins Ph.D. Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln!

Former CoCoDev Lab Manager, Anwyn Gatesy-Davis, entered the PhD program in Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this fall! Working under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey R. Stevens in the UNL Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab, they will be studying...

New Publication!

Congratulations to our Principal Investigator Dr. Buchsbaum and her collaborators, Emma C. Tecwyn and Pingki Mazumder, on their recent publication! The study looked at how young children learn about cause and effect logic. Read the article...

Congratulations to Drs. Buchsbaum and Leon-Villagra!

Congratulations to our Principal Investigator Dr. Daphna Buchsbaum and Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr. Pablo Leon-Villagra on receiving a Research Seed Award from Brown University! The funded project is titled “Understanding the dynamics of conceptual...

New Publication!

Congratulations to our Principal Investigator Dr. Buchsbaum and her collaborators, Alison Gopnik and Adrienne Wente on their recent publication! The study looked at the role of pretend play in counterfactual reasoning across cultures and socioeconomic groups. Read the...

Principal Investigator Interviewed by Carney Institute for Brain Science

Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science recently interviewed our Principal Investigator Dr. Buchsbaum about her research! Read the full article...

New Publication!

Congratulations to Pablo Leon Villagra, a postdoc in our lab, and his collaborators on publishing a paper in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society! The researchers investigated how children’s ideas about categories change as they...

New Publication!

Congratulations to our Principal Investigator, Dr. Daphna Buchsbaum, and her collaborators on publishing a new study in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society! They explored toddlers’ ability to understand sequences of actions...

Principal Investigator Quoted in Recent Slate Article

Our Principal Investigator, Dr. Daphna Buchsbaum, was recently quoted in a Slate article discussing the similarities and differences between children and dogs. As the director of both the Computational Cognitive Development Lab and the Brown Dog Lab, Dr. Buchsbaum...

Undergraduate Student’s Work in Brown Dog Lab Highlighted in Brown News

Sarah Zylberfuden, an undergraduate student working in the Brown Dog Lab, was the subject of a recent Brown News article. The article spotlights two current canine cognition studies in the lab and Sarah’s involvement in them. Read the article...

Location

We are located in the Metcalf Research Building on the Brown University campus.

Address: 190 Thayer Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02912

Contact Us

Email: cocodev@brown.edu

Phone: 401-863-2070