Department of Psychology
Annette Henderson
Lecturer
PhD (Queen’s University, Canada)
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 82521
Email: a.henderson@auckland.ac.nz
Room: HSB 524
Website: www.earlylearning.ac.nz
I joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland as a lecturer in August 2009. Before moving to New Zealand I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Maryland working with Professor Amanda Woodward. It was during this time that I learned about the methods used to study infant social cognition and my passion for investigating how infants come to understand their social worlds was ignited. I had already realized that children 2- to 4-years-old know quite a bit about their social world (thanks to my MSc with Dr. Susan Graham and PhD with Dr. Mark Sabbagh). However, it really is amazing how much babies know too! Now I am lucky enough to be able to establish the Early Learning Lab at the University of Auckland (ELLA) where I will continue the research that I love in a great department and beautiful country!
My research spans several topics relating to social, cognitive and language development in early childhood. I am particularly interested in the development of an understanding of the shared nature of linguistic symbols (i.e., words), social conventions, and non-linguistic collaborative action. I also investigate how this understanding shapes children’s knowledge acquisition and their perceptions of their social world.
Here are just a few of the questions I am currently exploring:
- What do infants understand about collaboration?
- When do infants understand that words are shared by individuals from the same linguistic community?
- How does an understanding of the shared nature of words affect word learning?
- What role does experience play in the development of children’s understanding of the shared nature of words and non-linguistic collaborations?
To investigate these questions I recruit a diverse set of methodological tools (e.g., Behavioural Tasks, Visual Habituation, Imitation, Eye-Tracking).
I am also a Psychosocial and Cognitive Development domain advisor for the Growing Up in NZ study. Learn more about this project at www.growingup.org.nz.
- Sabbagh, M. A., & Henderson, A. M. E. (in press). Preschoolers are selective word learners. To appear in M. R. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (Eds.) The Development of Social Cognition. Oxford University Press.
- Henderson, A. M. E., & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Nine-month-old infants generalize object labels, but not object preferences across individuals. Developmental Science. Accepted March, 2012.
- Henderson, A. M. E., Wang, Y., Matz, L. E., & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Active experience shapes 10-month-old infants' understanding of collaborative goals. Infancy. Accepted March, 2012.
- Henderson, A. M. E., & Woodward, A. L. (2011). "Let's work together": What do infants understand about collaborative goals? Cognition, 121, 12 – 21.
- Henderson, A. M. E., & Sabbagh, M. A. (2010).Parents’ use of conventional and unconventional labels in conversations with their preschoolers. Journal of Child Language, 37, 793 - 816. DOI:10.1017/S0305000909990122
- Woodward, A. L., Sommerville, J., Gerson, S., Henderson, A. M. E., & Buresh, J. (2009). The emergence of intention attribution in infancy. In B. Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 187 – 222). Academic Press: Burlington.DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(09)51006-7
- Henderson, A. M. E., Gerson, S., & Woodward, A. L. (2008). The birth of social intelligence. Zero-to-Three, 28, 13 – 20.
- Sabbagh, M. A., & Henderson, A. M. E. (2007). How an appreciation of conventionality shapes early word learning. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, 115, 25 - 37. DOI: 10.1002/cd.180
- Henderson, A. M. E., & Graham, S. A. (2005). Two-year-olds’ appreciation of the shared nature of novel object labels. Journal of Cognition and Development, 6, 381-402. DOI:10.1207/s15327647jcd0603_4
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