Elizabeth Spelke

Elizabeth Spelke
Elizabeth
Spelke
Investigator
Harvard University
Department:  Psychology
Lab Affiliation(s):  Laboratory for Developmental Studies

Associated Research Module: 

Associated Research Thrust: 

Prof. Spelke is the director of Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Harvard University.

Email:  spelke@wjh.harvard.edu
Room:  1130 William James Hall
Phone:  (617) 495-3876
Faculty Profile
Website: 
Lab Website:  Laboratory for Developmental Studies

Current Advisees

Caitlin Connolly - Research Assistant
Rhea Howard - Graduate Student
Shari Liu - Postdoc
Bill Pepe - Research Assistant
Ashley Thomas - Postdoc
Emily Walco - Graduate Student
Brandon Woo - Graduate Student

Past Advisees

Narges Ashfordi - Graduate Student
You-Jung Choi - Postdoc
Moira (Molly) Dillon - Graduate Student
Rosa Guzman - Lab Manager
Natasha Kalra - Lab Manager
Young-eun Lee - Graduate Student
Adrian Maries - Research Fellow
Annie Spokes - Graduate Student
Heather Tarr - Research Assistant

Projects

Computing Efficiency in Infancy
Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Kinship
Efficiency and Experience in Infants' Goal Representations
Lookit: an online developmental lab
Measuring and Improving Children's Intuitive Geometrical Understanding
The development of geometrical intuitions
The development of intuitive physics
The development of intuitive psychology

CBMM Publications

A. J. Thomas, Woo, B., Nettle, D., Spelke, E. S., and Saxe, R., “Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships”, Science, vol. 375, no. 6578, pp. 311 - 315, 2022.
T. Shu, Bhandwaldar, A., Gan, C., Smith, K. A., Liu, S., Gutfreund, D., Spelke, E. S., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Ullman, T. D., “ AGENT: A Benchmark for Core Psychological Reasoning”, Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning. 2021.
K. A. Smith, Mei, L., Yao, S., Wu, J., Spelke, E. S., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Ullman, T. D., “The fine structure of surprise in intuitive physics: when, why, and how much?”, in Proceedings of the 42th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020, virtual, July 29 - August 1, 2020, 2020.
A. J. Thomas, Saxe, R., and Spelke, E. S., “Infants represent 'like-kin' affiliation ”, in Budapest Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary, 2020.
D. Kim, McMahon, E., Mehr, S., Nakayama, K., Spelke, E. S., and Vaziri-Pashkam, M., “The ability to predict actions of others from distributed cues is still developing in children”, PsyArXiv Preprints, 2020.
S. Kim and Spelke, E. S., “Learning from multiple informants: Children’s response to epistemic bases for consensus judgments”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 192, p. 104759, 2020.
M. Sheskin, Scott, K., Mills, C. M., Bergelson, E., Bonawitz, E., Spelke, E. S., Fei-Fei, L., Keil, F. C., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., Jara-Ettinger, J., Adolph, K. E., Rhodes, M., Frank, M. C., Mehr, S. A., and Schulz, L., “Online Developmental Science to Foster Innovation, Access, and Impact”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 24, no. 9, pp. 675 - 678, 2020.
M. R. Dillon, Izard, V., and Spelke, E. S., “Infants’ sensitivity to shape changes in 2D visual forms”, Infancy, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 618 - 639, 2020.
S. Liu, Brooks, N. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants.”, Cognitive Development Society. 2019.
S. Liu, Cushman, F. A., Gershman, S. J., Kool, W., and Spelke, E. S., “Hard choices: Children’s understanding of the cost of action selection. ”, in Cognitive Science Society, 2019.
C. I. Calero, Shalom, D. E., Spelke, E. S., and Sigman, M., “Language, gesture, and judgment: Children’s paths to abstract geometry”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 177, pp. 70 - 85, 2019.
T. D. Ullman, Kosoy, E., Yildirim, I., Soltani, A. Arsalan, Siegel, M., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Draping an Elephant: Uncovering Children's Reasoning About Cloth-Covered Objects”, Cognitive Science Society. Montreal, Canada, 2019.
S. Liu, Brooks, N. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants”, PNAS, 2019.
K. A. Smith, Mei, L., Yao, S., Wu, J., Spelke, E. S., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Ullman, T. D., “Modeling Expectation Violation in Intuitive Physics with Coarse Probabilistic Object Representations”, 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019). Vancouver, Canada, 2019.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “From Map Reading to Geometric Intuitions”, Developmental Psychology, 2018.
Y. Hart, Dillon, M. R., Marantan, A., Cardenas, A. L., Spelke, E. S., and Mahadevan, L., “The statistical shape of geometric reasoning”, Scientific Reports, vol. 8, no. 1, 2018.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “At 4.5 but not 5.5 years, children favor kin when the stakes are moderately high”, PLOS ONE, vol. 13, no. 8, 2018.
L. J. Powell and Spelke, E. S., “Third-Party Preferences for Imitators in Preverbal Infants”, Open Mind, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 61 - 71, 2018.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Spatial cognition across development”, in SRCD, Austin, TX, 2017.
S. Liu, Ullman, T., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Ten-month-old infants infer value from effort”, Society for Research in Child Development. 2017.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Young children's use of distance and angle information during map reading”, SRCD. Austin, TX, 2017.
T. Ullman, Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Critical Cues in Early Physical Reasoning”, SRCD. Austin, TX, 2017.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “Four-year-old children favor kin when the stakes are higher”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) . Portland, OR, 2017.
S. Liu, Ullman, T., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Ten-month-old infants infer value from effort”, SRCD. Austin, TX, 2017.
A. C. Spokes, Venkatesan, T., and Spelke, E. S., “Five-month-old infants attend to responsive caregivers”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Portland, OR, 2017.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “The cradle of social knowledge: Infants' reasoning about caregiving and affiliation”, Cognition, vol. 159, pp. 102-116, 2017.
S. Liu and Spelke, E. S., “Six-month-old infants expect agents to minimize the cost of their actions”, Cognition, vol. 160, pp. 35-42, 2017.
T. D. Ullman, Spelke, E. S., Battaglia, P., and Tenenbaum, J. B., “Mind Games: Game Engines as an Architecture for Intuitive Physics”, Trends in Cognitive Science, vol. 21, no. 9, pp. 649 - 665, 2017.
S. Liu, Ullman, T. D., Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Ten-month-old infants infer the value of goals from the costs of actions”, Science, vol. 358, pp. 1038-1041, 2017.
E. S. Spelke, Sternberg, R. J., Fiske, S. T., and Foss, D. J., “Cognitive abilities of infants”, in Scientists Making a Difference: One Hundred Eminent Behavioral and Brain Scientists Talk about Their Most Important Contributions, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
E. S. Spelke, Barner, D., and Baron, A. S., “Core knowledge and conceptual change: A perspective on social cognition”, in Core Knowledge and Conceptual Change, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Young Children’s Use of Surface and Object Information in Drawings of Everyday Scenes”, Child Development, 2016.
J. Jara-Ettinger, Piantadosi, S., Spelke, E. S., Levy, R., and Gibson, E., “Mastery of the logic of natural numbers is not the result of mastery of counting: Evidence from late counters. ”, Developmental Science, 2016.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “Children’s Expectations and Understanding of Kinship as a Social Category”, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 440, pp. 1664-1078, 2016.
S. Liu and Spelke, E. S., “Continuous representations of action efficiency in infancy”, CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD16). 2016.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks”, in International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), New Orleans, LA, 2016.
A. C. Spokes, “How Infants Reason About Affective States and Social Interactions”, International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) . New Orleans, Louisiana , 2016.
T. Ullman, Tenenbaum, J. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Effort as a bridging concept across action and action understanding: Weight and Physical Effort in Predictions of Efficiency in Other Agents”, in International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS) , New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “The Functions of Infants’ Social Categorization: Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks”, in International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016.
S. Liu, Brooks, N. B., and Spelke, E. S., “Pre-reaching infants expect causal agents to act efficiently without motor training”, 20th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS). 2016.
H. L. Kosakowski, Powell, L. J., and Spelke, E. S., “Preverbal Infants' Third-Party Imitator Preferences: Animated Displays versus Filmed Actors”, International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS). New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016.
G. Dehaene-Lambertz and Spelke, E. S., “The infancy of the human brain”. 2016.
M. R. Dillon, Izard, V., and Spelke, E. S., “Isolating angle in infants' detection of shape”. 2015.
M. R. Dillon, Izard, V., and Spelke, E. S., “Infants’ sensitivity to shape changes.”, Cognitive Development Society Pre-Conference on the Development of Spatial Thinking. 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions.”, Biennial Meeting of Cognitive Development Society. 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Reorientation ability predicts early spatial symbol reading”, in 2015 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Connecting core cognition, spatial symbols, and the abstract concepts of formal geometry.”, in Cognitive Development Society Post-Conference, More on Development, 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Young children’s automatic and alternating use of scene and object information in spatial symbols.”, in Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, 2015.
M. R. Dillon, Pires, A. C., Hyde, D. C., and Spelke, E. S., “Children's expectations about training the approximate number system.”, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 33, no. 4, 2015.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). 2015.
A. C. Spokes and Spelke, E. S., “Early reasoning about affiliation and kinship.”. Poster presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA, 2015.
H. L. Kosakowski, Powell, L. J., and Spelke, E. S., “Preverbal Infants' Third-Party Imitator Preferences: Animated Displays versus Filmed Actors”, CBMM Summer Research Program. MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2015.
A. C. Spokes, “Infants’ Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) | More on Development workshop. Columbus, Ohio, 2015.
L. J. Powell and Spelke, E. S., “Infants’ Categorization of Social Actions”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Columbus, OH, 2015.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “From spatial symbols to Euclidean intuitions”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) . Columbus, OH, 2015.
A. C. Spokes, “Infants’ Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving”, Cognitive Development Society (CDS) Biennial Meeting. 2015.
S. Liu and Spelke, E. S., “Six-month-old infants represent action efficiency on a continuous scale.”, 9th Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society (CDS). Columbus, Ohio, 2015.
G. Dehaene-Lambertz and Spelke, E. S., “The Infancy of the Human Brain”, Neuron, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 93 - 109, 2015.
H. L. Kosakowski, Powell, L. J., and Spelke, E. S., “Imitation Preferences of Preverbal Infants.”, CBMM Summer Research Program. Poster presentation at the Center for Brain Minds and Machines Summer Conference, Cambridge, MA, 2014.
M. R. Dillon and Spelke, E. S., “Core geometry in perspective”, Developmental Science, 2014.
M. R. Dillon, Huang, Y., and Spelke, E. S., “Core foundations of abstract geometry”, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 110, no. 35, 2013.