What is the nature of mental representations in infancy? How does it change with experience? What are the mechanisms responsible for this development? My research explores answers to these questions.

Publications

1. Infant Cognition

Wang, S., & Mitroff, S. R. (in press). Preserved visual representations despite change blindness in infants. Developmental Science. PDF

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Can infants be "taught" to attend to a new physical variable in an event category? The case of height in covering events. Cognitive Psychology, 56, 284-326. PDF

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2008). Detecting impossible changes in infancy: A three-system account. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 17-23. PDF

Wang, S., & Kohne, L. (2007). Visual experience enhances infants' use of task-relevant information in an action task. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1513-1522. PDF

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2006). Infants' physical knowledge affects their change detection. Developmental Science, 9, 173-181. PDF

Baillargeon, R., Li, J., Luo, Y., & Wang, S. (2006). Under what conditions do infants detect continuity violations? In Johnson, M. H., & Munakata, Y. (Eds.), Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development (Attention and Performance XXI, pp. 163-188). New York: Oxford University Press.

Wang, S., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Inducing infants to detect a physical violation in a single trial. Psychological Science, 16, 542-549. PDF

Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Paterson, S. (2005). Detecting continuity violations in infancy: A new account and new evidence from covering and tube events. Cognition, 95, 129-173. PDF

Wang, S., Baillargeon, R., & Brueckner, L. (2004). Young infants' reasoning about hidden objects: Evidence from violation-of-expectation tasks with test trials only. Cognition, 93, 167-198. PDF

Wang, S., Kaufman, L., & Baillargeon, R. (2003). Should all stationary objects move when hit? Developments in infants' causal and statistical expectations about collision events. Infant Behavior & Development, 26, 529-567. PDF

Baillargeon, R., & Wang, S. (2002). Event categorization in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 85-93. PDF

2. Socio-Cultural Aspects of Early Development

Cho, G.E., Sandel, T., Miller, P.J., & Wang, S. (2005). What do grandmothers think about self-esteem? American and Taiwanese theories revisited. Social Development, 14, 701-721. PDF

Miller, P. J., Hengst, J. A., & Wang, S. (2003). Ethnographic methods: Applications from developmental cultural psychology. In P.M. Camic, J.E. Rhodes, & L. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design (pp. 219-242). Washington DC: APA. PDF

Miller, P. J., Wang, S., Sandel, T., & Cho, G. E. (2002). Self-esteem as folk theory: A comparison of European American and Taiwanese mothers' beliefs. Parenting: Science and Practice, 2, 209-239. PDF