Welcome!

Big news at the Cognitive Development Center!

  • We are happy to announce a new faculty hire, Lei Yuan, joining our collection of labs, including Eliana Colunga's DACS Lab and Monique LeBourgeois' Sleep and Development Lab
  • One of our former faculty members, Yuko Munakata, and three of her graduate students — Jesse Niebaum, Winnie Zhuang, and Jade Yonehiro — have moved to the University of California, Davis, with much gratitude to all the families who have participated in projects with the Cognitive Development Center over the years. Hilary Traut chose to stay in Boulder, where she will finish her dissertation with Professor Munakata as her remote mentor. Professor Munakata is now directing the Cognition in Context Lab — their updates on child development research (including projects that families participated in at the Cognitive Development Center) will be available on Facebook here
  • Grace Dostart, our Center Coordinator, and Ryan Guild, our Professional Research Assistant, are both transitioning to the Renée Crown Wellness Institute as Research Project Managers.  We wish them both well in their future endeavors!

Our goal at the Cognitive Development Center is to understand thinking and how it changes with development. We work with infants, children, and adolescents to explore the development of executive function, memory, and language. These cognitive processes develop dramatically during childhood, and predict important life outcomes years and even decades later. We also explore social and emotional influences on these developments, and implications for interventions. Learning how these abilities develop can help us understand not only how children think, but also how we come to think as adults.