PEOPLE

Professor

My research focuses on cognitive and language development, from infancy to middle childhood. In recent years, my colleagues, collaborators, students, and I have been developing a new, rational constructivist, approach to cognitive development. For some representative publications on this view, see Xu (2019, Psychological Review), Fedyk and Xu (2018, Review of Philosophy and Psychology), Xu and Kushnir (2013; Current Directions in Psychological Science), and Xu and Kushnir (2012; Rational Constructivism in Cognitive Development – an edited volume).

Fei Xu's Curriculum Vitae

GWYNETH HEUSER

Lab Manager

Hi! My name is Gwyneth, and I am the lab manager of the Berkeley Early Learning Lab. In 2019, I graduated from the University of Rochester with a Bachelor of Science in Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and a Minor in Linguistics. I am interested in psycholinguistics and language acquisition, and developmental psychology in general. I have worked in developmental and cognition labs at the University of Rochester, the University of Notre Dame, and Yale University. Outside of academia, I enjoy writing fiction, playing video games, and spending time with my dogs.

RUTHE FOUSHEE

Graduate Student

My background is in linguistics, and as a graduate student in psychology, I am interested in language as a cognitive and social system. I am interested in what language learners can tell us about the composition of meaning, what their performance on linguistic tasks reveals about their conceptions of language itself, and the implications of those developing linguistic assumptions for methodologies in the field. In the Xu Lab, I am currently working on a project exploring eavesdropping as a compensatory active learning strategy. I am grateful to be funded by the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study.

YUAN MENG

Graduate Student

Hi, this is Yuan from the Berkeley Early Learning Lab. I’m mainly interested in how infants and young children actively gather information about the physical and the social world and make inferences, update beliefs, and form theories on the basis of self-generated evidence.

RONGZHI LIU

Graduate Student

Hi, my name is Rongzhi Liu. I’m interested in how young children learn from the social world and learn about the social world. Particularly, I’m curious about how children reason and infer about other people and social groups. I’m also interested in how children actively gather information from the social world to help them learn.

ROYA BAHARLOO

Graduate Student

Hi, my name is Roya and I study social and cognitive development in infants and young children. My research interests involve studying these two domains of development in typically-developing children, as well as in special populations (e.g. children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD). I am especially interested in investigating the cognitive processes that may underlie distinct behavior in different populations.

ELENA LUCHKINA

Visiting Researcher, Post-Doctorate

I am a visiting researcher at the Berkeley Early Learning Lab and at Dr. Srinivasan’s Language and Cognitive Development Lab. I have just finished my dissertation work at Brown University with Drs. James Morgan and Dave Sobel. My research focuses on how children learn words and use their social knowledge to make inferences about word meanings. My postdoctoral work will be dedicated to studying the effects of SES on children’s attention to word input and their word learning outcomes. Aside from word learning, I have investigated speech sound categorization in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and children’s causal reasoning. As an undergraduate, I studied management and finance but later decided to become a cognitive scientist. I am excited to be at UC Berkeley and hope that it will become my new home for the next few years!