Members of the Causality & Mind Lab include:
Primary Investigator, Dr. David Sobel
Graduate Students
Research Assistants
Lab Alumni
Collaborators
Primary Investigator
David Sobel [research profile]
Dr. David Sobel is an Associate Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Science at Brown University. He received his BA in Psychology and Computer Science from Swarthmore College, and his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is interested in children’s causal learning and inferential abilities, as 
well as children’s developing theory of mind. He has also investigated children’s understanding of number, intentionality, word learning, and how children perceive ambiguous figures. He mostly works with typically developing infants and preschoolers, but has also done research with children on the Autistic Spectrum, adults, computational models, and robots. He is a Bridge (the card game) Lifemaster, an avid cook, and a terrible racquetball player, which he nonetheless enjoys. His daughter makes him smile.
Read David Sobel's blog, "My Child the Scientist" on Psychology Today.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Hugh Rabagliati
Graduate Students
David W. Buchanan [research profile]
I have two jobs: I play games with preschoolers, and then try to make computer programs that are as smart as preschoolers. The children usually win. The games are usually about causal reasoning, especially causal mechanisms, but I also have projects on language learning and theory of mind. My modeling work focuses on Causal Graphical Models, and other Bayesian models of cognition, and how they apply to development.
Deanna M. Macris
I am a second year graduate student and am interested in the development of language and social cognition. My current research focuses on what cues preschoolers use to evaluate the reliability of a speaker. I am also interested in the nature of the explanations that parents give to their children.
Christopher Erb
Elena Tenenbaum [research profile]
Research Assistants
Hannah Boettcher Brianna Doherty
Katie Green Katie Williams
Lab Alumni
Esra Aksu
Megan Blossom
Emily Blumenthal
Abigail Bookman
Alisa Breetz
Karis Casegrande
Jonathan Cohen
Claire Cook
Kathleen Corriveau
Allison Farrell
Emily Hopkins
Caroline Kleeman
Victoria Mazgalev
Sarah Munro
Katie Noe
Philip Parker
Henry Parkin
Kelly Powell
Kyle Schmitt
Rachel Shelley-Abrahamson
Cesalie Stepney
Emily Stoddard
Kristen Swan
Lea Ventura
Sara Yerry
Beverly Young
Collaborators
Emily Bushnell, Tufts University
Alison Gopnik, University of California Berkeley
Tom Griffiths, University of California Berkeley
Natasha Kirkham, Birkbeck, University of London
Tamar Kushnir, Cornell University
Angel Lillard, University of Virginia
Laura Schulz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jessica Sommerville, University of Washington
Josh Tenenbaum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
