Tamar Kushnir
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Current Appointments & Affiliations
- Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Psychology & Neuroscience, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2021
- Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2021
- Faculty Network Member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, University Institutes and Centers 2022
Contact Information
- 417 Chapel Drive, Box 90086, Durham, NC 27708
- 417 Chapel Drive, Box 90086, Durham, NC 27708
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tamar.kushnir@duke.edu
- Background
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Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of California - Berkeley 2005
- M.A., University of California - Berkeley 2004
- B.A., Barnard College 1996
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Previous Appointments & Affiliations
- Scholar In Residence of Psychology and Neuroscience, Psychology & Neuroscience, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2021
- Recognition
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In the News
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APR 10, 2023 Duke Today -
SEP 27, 2022 -
NOV 3, 2021 Trinity College of Arts and SciencesTamar Kushnir
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- Research
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Selected Grants
- The Impact of Gossip on Children's Feelings of Belongingness awarded by National Institutes of Health 2023 - 2026
- Religion, Normativity, and Self-regulation awarded by University of California - Riverside 2020 - 2025
- Collaborative Research: The role of trust when learning from robots awarded by National Science Foundation 2021 - 2024
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External Relationships
- John Templeton Foundation (non-profit)
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Associate Editor
- Publications & Artistic Works
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Selected Publications
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Books
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Xu, F., & Kushnir, T. (2012). Preface. What is rational constructivism? (Vol. 43, pp. xi–xiv). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-397919-3.22001-7Full Text
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Academic Articles
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Flanagan, T., Wong, G., & Kushnir, T. (2023). The minds of machines: Children's beliefs about the experiences, thoughts, and morals of familiar interactive technologies. Developmental Psychology, 59(6), 1017–1031. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001524Full Text
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Partington, S., Nichols, S., & Kushnir, T. (2023). Rational learners and parochial norms. Cognition, 233, 105366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105366Full Text
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Heck, I. A., Kushnir, T., & Kinzler, K. D. (2023). Building representations of the social world: Children extract patterns from social choices to reason about multi-group hierarchies. Developmental Science, e13366. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13366Full Text
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Zhao, X., & Kushnir, T. (2023). When it's not easy to do the right thing: Developmental changes in understanding cost drive evaluations of moral praiseworthiness. Developmental Science, 26(1), e13257. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13257Full Text Open Access Copy
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Shachnai, R., Kushnir, T., & Bian, L. (2022). Walking in Her Shoes: Pretending to Be a Female Role Model Increases Young Girls' Persistence in Science. Psychological Science, 33(11), 1818–1827. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221119393Full Text
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Kushnir, T. (2022). Imagination and social cognition in childhood. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science, 13(4), e1603. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1603Full Text
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Flanagan, T. M., & Kushnir, T. (2022). Children's Developing Beliefs About Agency and Free Will in an Increasingly Technological World. Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15(42), 179–204.Link to Item
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Ransom, A., LaGrant, B., Spiteri, A., Kushnir, T., Anderson, A. K., & De Rosa, E. (2022). Face-to-face learning enhances the social transmission of information. Plos One, 17(2), e0264250. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264250Full Text
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Zhao, X., Wente, A., Flecha, M. F., Galvan, D. S., Gopnik, A., & Kushnir, T. (2021). Culture moderates the relationship between self-control ability and free will beliefs in childhood. Cognition, 210, 104609–104609. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104609Full Text Open Access Copy
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Heck, I. A., Kushnir, T., & Kinzler, K. D. (2021). Social sampling: Children track social choices to reason about status hierarchies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001008Full Text
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Liu, J., Partington, S., Suh, Y., Finiasz, Z., Flanagan, T., Kocher, D., … Kushnir, T. (2021). The Community-Engaged Lab: A Case-Study Introduction for Developmental Science. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 715914. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.715914Full Text Open Access Copy
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Zhao, X., Gweon, H., & Kushnir, T. (2021). Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful Actions. Child Development, 92, 1238–1253. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13480Full Text
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Wang, Q., & Kushnir, T. (2019). Cultural Pathways in Cognitive Development: Introduction to the Special Issue. Cognitive Development, 52, 100816–100816. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100816Full Text
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Zhao, X., & Kushnir, T. (2019). How U.S. And Chinese children talk about personal, moral and conventional choices. Cognitive Development, 52, 100804–100804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100804Full Text
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Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2019). The ontogeny of cumulative culture: Individual toddlers vary in faithful imitation and goal emulation. Developmental Science, 23. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12862Full Text
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Chernyak, N., Kang, C., & Kushnir, T. (2019). The cultural roots of free will beliefs: How Singaporean and U.S. Children judge and explain possibilities for action in interpersonal contexts. Developmental Psychology, 55, 866–876. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000670Full Text
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Kushnir, T. (2018). The developmental and cultural psychology of free will. Philosophy Compass, 13, e12529–e12529. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12529Full Text
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Eason, A. E., Doctor, D., Chang, E., Kushnir, T., & Sommerville, J. A. (2018). The choice is yours: Infants' expectations about an agent's future behavior based on taking and receiving actions. Developmental Psychology, 54(5), 829–841. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000482Full Text
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Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2018). The influence of understanding and having choice on children's prosocial behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 20, 107–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.043Full Text
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Vondervoort, J. W. V. D., Aknin, L. B., Kushnir, T., Slevinsky, J., & Hamlin, J. K. (2018). Selectivity in toddlers’ behavioral and emotional reactions to prosocial and antisocial others. Developmental Psychology, 54, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000404Full Text
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Zhao, X., & Kushnir, T. (2018). Young children consider individual authority and collective agreement when deciding who can change rules. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 165, 101–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.004Full Text
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Kushnir, T., & Koenig, M. A. (2017). What I don’t know won’t hurt you: The relation between professed ignorance and later knowledge claims. Developmental Psychology, 53, 826–835. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000294Full Text
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Chernyak, N., Trieu, B. Y., & Kushnir, T. (2017). Preschoolers’ Selfish Sharing Is Reduced by Prior Experience With Proportional Generosity. Open Mind, 1, 42–52. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00004Full Text
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Wellman, H. M., Kushnir, T., Xu, F., & Brink, K. A. (2016). Infants Use Statistical Sampling to Understand the Psychological World. Infancy, 21(5), 668–676. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12131Full Text
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Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2016). When what’s inside counts: Sequence of demonstrated actions affects preschooler’s categorization by nonobvious properties. Developmental Psychology, 52, 400–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000088Full Text
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Josephs, M., Kushnir, T., Gräfenhain, M., & Rakoczy, H. (2016). Children protest moral and conventional violations more when they believe actions are freely chosen. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 247–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.08.002Full Text
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Koenig, M. A., Cole, C. A., Meyer, M., Ridge, K. E., Kushnir, T., & Gelman, S. A. (2015). Reasoning about knowledge: Children’s evaluations of generality and verifiability. Cognitive Psychology, 83, 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2015.08.007Full Text
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Kushnir, T., Gopnik, A., Chernyak, N., Seiver, E., & Wellman, H. M. (2015). Developing intuitions about free will between ages four and six. Cognition, 138, 79–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.01.003Full Text
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Vredenburgh, C., & Kushnir, T. (2015). Young Children\textquotesingles Help-Seeking as Active Information Gathering. Cognitive Science, 40, 697–722. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12245Full Text
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Vredenburgh, C., Kushnir, T., & Casasola, M. (2014). Pedagogical cues encourage toddlers\textquotesingle transmission of recently demonstrated functions to unfamiliar adults. Developmental Science, 18, 645–654. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12233Full Text
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Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2014). The Self as a Moral Agent: Preschoolers Behave Morally but Believe in the Freedom to Do Otherwise. Journal of Cognition and Development, 15, 453–464. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2013.777843Full Text
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Fedyk, M., & Kushnir, T. (2014). Development links psychological causes to evolutionary explanations. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 142–143. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x1300201xFull Text
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Lucas, C. G., Griffiths, T. L., Xu, F., Fawcett, C., Gopnik, A., Kushnir, T., … Hu, J. (2014). The Child as Econometrician: A Rational Model of Preference Understanding in Children. Plos One, 9, e92160–e92160. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092160Full Text Open Access Copy
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Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2014). Social context effects in 2- and 4-year-olds’ selective versus faithful imitation. Developmental Psychology, 50, 922–933. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034242Full Text
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Diesendruck, G., Salzer, S., Kushnir, T., & Xu, F. (2013). When Choices Are Not Personal: The Effect of Statistical and Social Cues on Children\textquotesingles Inferences About the Scope of Preferences. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16, 370–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2013.848870Full Text
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Sobel, D. M., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Knowledge matters: how children evaluate the reliability of testimony as a process of rational inference. Psychological Review, 120(4), 779–797. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034191Full Text
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Chernyak, N., Kushnir, T., Sullivan, K. M., & Wang, Q. (2013). A comparison of American and Nepalese children's concepts of freedom of choice and social constraint. Cognitive Science, 37(7), 1343–1355. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12046Full Text
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Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Giving Preschoolers Choice Increases Sharing Behavior. Psychological Science, 24, 1971–1979. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613482335Full Text
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Xu, F., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Infants Are Rational Constructivist Learners. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 28–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412469396Full Text
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Kushnir, T., Vredenburgh, C., & Schneider, L. A. (2013). “Who can help me fix this toy?” The distinction between causal knowledge and word knowledge guides preschoolers\textquotesingle selective requests for information. Developmental Psychology, 49, 446–453. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031649Full Text
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Kushnir, T., & Chernyak, N. (2010). Understanding the adult moralist requires first understanding the child scientist. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 343–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x10002037Full Text
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Kushnir, T., Xu, F., & Wellman, H. M. (2010). Young Children Use Statistical Sampling to Infer the Preferences of Other People. Psychological Science, 21, 1134–1140. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376652Full Text
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Kushnir, T., Gopnik, A., Lucas, C., & Schulz, L. (2009). Inferring Hidden Causal Structure. Cognitive Science, 34, 148–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01072.xFull Text
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Kushnir, T., Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (2009). A self-agency bias in preschoolers\textquotesingle causal inferences. Developmental Psychology, 45, 597–603. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014727Full Text
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Kushnir, T., Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (2008). The role of preschoolers’ social understanding in evaluating the informativeness of causal interventions. Cognition, 107, 1084–1092. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.10.004Full Text
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Kushnir, T., & Gopnik, A. (2007). Conditional probability versus spatial contiguity in causal learning: Preschoolers use new contingency evidence to overcome prior spatial assumptions. Developmental Psychology, 43, 186–196. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.1.186Full Text
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Sobel, D. M., & Kushnir, T. (2006). The importance of decision making in causal learning from interventions. Memory & Cognition, 34(2), 411–419. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03193418Full Text
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Kushnir, T., & Gopnik, A. (2005). Young Children Infer Causal Strength From Probabilities and Interventions. Psychological Science, 16, 678–683. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01595.xFull Text
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Gopnik, A., Glymour, C., Sobel, D. M., Schulz, L. E., Kushnir, T., & Danks, D. (2004). A Theory of Causal Learning in Children: Causal Maps and Bayes Nets. Psychological Review, 111, 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.111.1.3Full Text
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Book Sections
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Vredenburgh, C., Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2016). Young children's flexible social cognition and sensitivity to context facilitates their learning. In Social Cognition: Development Across the Life Span (pp. 238–257). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315520575Full Text
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Kushnir, T. (2012). Developing a concept of choice. (Vol. 43, pp. 193–218). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-397919-3.00007-1Full Text
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Schulz, L., Kushnir, T., & Gopnik, A. (2010). Learning From Doing: Intervention and Causal Inference. In Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, and Computation. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176803.003.0006Full Text
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Conference Papers
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Partington, S., Nichols, S., & Kushnir, T. (2021). Is children’s norm learning rational? A meta-analysis. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds, Cogsci 2021 (pp. 2752–2758).
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Kocher, D., Sarmiento, L., Heller, S., Yang, Y., Kushnir, T., & Green, K. E. (2020). No, Your Other Left! Language Children Use To Direct Robots. In 2020 Joint Ieee 10th International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (Icdl Epirob). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/icdl-epirob48136.2020.9278108Full Text
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Kocher, D., Kushnir, T., & Green, K. E. (2020). Better together: Young children's tendencies to help a non-humanoid robot collaborator. In Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference, Idc 2020 (pp. 243–249). https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394426Full Text
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Partington, S., Nichols, S., & Kushnir, T. (2020). When in Rome, do as Bayesians do: Statistical learning and parochial norms. In Proceedings for the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, Cogsci 2020 (pp. 2679–2684).
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Flanagan, T., & Kushnir, T. (2019). Individual differences in fluency with idea generation predict children's beliefs in their own free will. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, Cogsci 2019 (pp. 1738–1744).
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Varhol, A. R., Kushnir, T., & Koenig, M. A. (2019). Preschoolers' Evaluations of Ignorant Agents are Situation-Specific. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, Cogsci 2019 (pp. 3022–3028).
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Zhao, X., & Kushnir, T. (2019). She Helped Even Though She Wanted to Play: Children Consider Psychological Cost in Social Evaluations. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, Cogsci 2019 (pp. 3199–3205).
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Kushnir, T., & Gelman, S. A. (2016). Translating testimonial claims into evidence for category-based induction. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2016 (pp. 1307–1312).
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Wente, A. O., Ting, T., Aboody, R., Kushnir, T., & Gopnik, A. (2016). The Relationship Between Inhibitory Control and Free Will Beliefs in 4-to 6-Year-Old-Children. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2016 (pp. 770–775).
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Zhao, X., & Kushnir, T. (2016). Children's Awareness of Authority to Change Rules in Various Social Contexts. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2016 (pp. 1877–1882).
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Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2015). Understanding young children's imitative behavior from an individual differences perspective. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2015 (pp. 2769–2774).
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Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Inferring One's Own Prosociality Through Choice: Giving Preschoolers Costly Prosocial Choices Increases Subsequent Sharing Behavior. In Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2013 (pp. 2040–2045).
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Vredenburgh, C., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Help-Seeking As A Cause of Young Children's Collaboration. In Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2013 (pp. 3705–3710).
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Chernyak, N., Kushnir, T., Sullivan, K. M., & Wang, Q. (2011). A Comparison of Nepalese and American Children’s Concepts of Free Will. In Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2011 (pp. 144–149).
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Yu, Y., & Kushnir, T. (2011). It’s all about the game: Infants’ action strategies during imitation are influenced by their prior expectations. In Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cogsci 2011 (pp. 3570–3574).
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- Teaching & Mentoring
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Recent Courses
- PSY 103: Developmental Psychology: Introduction and Survey 2023
- PSY 203: Practicum 2023
- PSY 390S: Special Topics in Psychology 2023
- PSY 494: Research Independent Study 2023
- PSY 990: Special Readings in Psychology 2023
- PSY 203: Practicum 2022
- PSY 482S: Psychology of Imagination 2022
- PSY 493: Research Independent Study 2022
- PSY 494: Research Independent Study 2022
- PSY 729S: The Minds of Children 2022
- PSY 782S: Psychology of Imagination 2022
- PSY 203: Practicum 2021
- PSY 482S: Psychology of Imagination 2021
- PSY 782S: Psychology of Imagination 2021
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