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), Denison and Xu (2019, Perspectives on Psychological Science), Xu and Kushnir (2013, Current Directions in Psychological Science), and Xu and Kushnir (2012, Rational Constructivism in Cognitive Development – an edited volume).
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
BELL Alumni

ELENA LUCHKINA
Visiting Researcher, Post-Doctorate

HARMONIE STROHL
Postbaccalaureate for premed, California State University, Fullerton

SHAUN O'GRADY
Application Developer Senior Analyst, Accenture Operations, San Antonio, Texas.

ZI LIN SIM
Psychologist and Autism Therapist, Autism Resource Centre (Singapore)
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AZZURRA RUGGERI
Assistant Professor, Technische Universität München (Germany)
Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Germany)
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MINGYI WANG
Associate Professor at Department of Psychology, Beijing Forestry University (China)

STEPHANIE DENISON
Associate Professor, Univeristy of Waterloo (Canada)
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JANE HU
Science Journalist, Seattle US
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VINCENT G. BERTHIAUME
Tech Lead at Audioworks Technologies, Montreal, Canada

KATHRYN DEWAR
Senior Research Manager at Women's Health Research Institute, Vancouver, Canada
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KRISTA BYERS-HEINLEIN
Associate Professor, Concordia University (Canada)
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MIJKE RHEMTULLA
Associate Professor, Univeristy of California, Davis
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LILI MA
Associate Professor, Ryerson University (Canada)
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