Developmental Psychology: Infancy and Childhood

Prof. Dr. Moritz Daum

The Developmental Psychology group investigates the social-cognitive development of humans and how they become social actors who interact with their social environment. Our group examines the interplay between verbal and non-verbal representations in language development and the development of actions, as well as children’s social-cognitive and communicative abilities in monolingual or multilingual contexts. We also explore the influ-ence of cultural background on social-cognitive development using techniques such as be-havioral studies, eye tracking, and electroencephalography. Our group has developed a smartphone-based developmental diary app (https://www.weltentdeckerapp.ch) that al-lows caregivers to track the development of their children continuously and longitudinally in four different domains from birth to age 6. We aim to identify intra- and inter-individual relations and disentangle the effects of experience and maturation in developing skills to advance theories about children’s development and increase our understanding of devel-opmental change.