Infants make nuanced moral character judgments as early as 12-months-old, study finds Research by psychologists at the University of Toronto suggests that we begin to make moral character judgments as early as 12-months-old while also recognizing that individuals can exist along a mora...

“As adults, we think there are good people, bad people, and people who are somewhere in between,” says @jessicas.bsky.social, professor of psychology @artsci.utoronto.ca.

“It seems like infants are thinking the same way.”

👶 www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/infants...

We are greatly looking forward CDS in Montreal next week!! Come see us at our talks and posters!

Alice Cooper - School's Out (from Alice Cooper: Trashes The World) YouTube video by AliceCooperVEVO

LAST CLASS of 2025/2026 academic year is in the books! I know what I'll be dancing to tonight!!

Loved working on this paper with Kat (lead) and Hyo!

Infants make moral character inferences in multi-agent social interactions - Communications Psychology Using eye-gaze methods, this research investigated infants’ ability to make moral character inferences. For a wide range of moral roles, infants could use an agent’s past moral behavior to revise thei...

This research investigated infants’ ability to make moral character inferences. For a wide range of moral roles, infants could use an agent’s past moral behavior to revise their expectations for future moral behavior.
@normanjzeng.bsky.social
@jessicas.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Infants make moral character inferences in multi-agent social interactions - Communications Psychology Using eye-gaze methods, this research investigated infants’ ability to make moral character inferences. For a wide range of moral roles, infants could use an agent’s past moral behavior to revise thei...

Stoked to share our new lab pub led by the amazing @normanjzeng.bsky.social ! After watching multi-party agent events, infants expect agents to preserve their moral "role" in a resource distribution task. Indiv. variability predicted by infants' social contact.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Always a pleasure :)

So very happy for you and so very proud of you!!!!

Are you attending @cogdevsoc.bsky.social 2026? Come join us for an afternoon pre-conference workshop on motivation in development! We'll bring together developmental, educational, and computational perspectives to ask: Can we build a unified account of motivation across the lifespan? ✨

Text against a light blue background: Merit Awards - Distinguished Early Career Contribution, Outstanding Dissertation, Translational Research. Submission deadline: March 26

Shine a spotlight on exceptional #infantstudies researchers by nominating for the Distinguished Early Career Contribution Award, Outstanding Dissertation Award and Translational Research Award. Close March 26, 2026.

infantstudies.org/merit-awards/

Children's decision to challenge themselves on a novel task relates to their metacognitive monitoring of their ability Abstract. We examined potential processes by which children decide to make hard as opposed to easy choices to accomplish a goal. Five- to 7-year olds (N =

New paper out in Child Development (@srcdorg.bsky.social) with Dave Sobel (@candmlab.bsky.social)! ✨ We investigated how 5- to 7-year-old children decide to take on easy versus hard tasks while pursuing a goal. doi.org/10.1093/chid...

I was so excited when I saw your name on the list! will you be at CDS?

Childhood and AI Lab welcome page

The first generation to grow up with AI deserves healthy social relationships. I'm pleased to be a part of this international, interdisciplinary Research Fellowship childhoodandailab.org/our-fellows-... with the #ChildhoodAndAILab from #AIChildSafety.org.

Big news on #SaferInternetDay: I’ve been elected as a Research Fellow with the AIChildSafety.org Childhood & AI Lab.

Grateful to John Zoltner and the Lab for creating space for this kind of work.
🔗 lnkd.in/ggm6bgtv

#AIChildSafety #ChildhoodAndAI #ResponsibleAI #DevSci

Why do otherwise rational people disagree about the same evidence? Our new paper finds that group membership is a deeply rooted influence on how we form beliefs, leading even preschoolers to bias their evidential standards and form inaccurate beliefs.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

💥New paper alert! Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence (with @reutshachnai.bsky.social)

One of my favorites! If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to in @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social, take a look!
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The emergence of disadvantageous inequity aversion between 2–4 years When and how children begin responding to inequitable resource distributions, particularly those that put them at a disadvantage, remains unclear. Acr…

We propose that 2-year-olds show emerging sensitivity to disadvantageous outcomes, but only 4-year-olds' costly responses to unfairness reflect true disadvantageous inequity aversion.

Read more at:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New lab paper with Dave Sobel @candmlab.bsky.social and led by the remarkable @radovanovic.bsky.social and @jaeminhwang.bsky.social. Infants expect equality not only in resource distributions but also resource collections.

Figure shows the methods used in the paper's experiments. In the left column are the methods for Exp 1 (Collection) and in the right are the methods for Exp 2 (Distribution). In each video, three women sit at a table. One sits in the middle, serving as a collector/distributor, and two sit in the foreground with plates. During familiarization trials, resources were collected from or distributed to their plates with an occluder on the screen hiding the outcomes. During test trials, the same videos were played but with the outcomes shown such that infants either viewed an equal collection/distribution or an unequal collection/distribution.

Out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @jaeminhwang.bsky.social, David Sobel (@candmlab.bsky.social), and @jessicas.bsky.social! Most studies of infants’ fairness expectations focus on resource distribution, but in everyday life, we engage in many different kinds of resource exchanges.

This paper about inferences that kids draw on the basis of parental incarceration is now published! Pretty version here: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-.... Link to full text & summary in thread below.
🧪 #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

Is it wrong that I'm trying to use AI to try to come up with AI proof assignments for my students? (pls say no, or better yet, give me some suggestions!).

Big ideas in 180 seconds The 10th Annual Three Minute Thesis Competition showcased graduate students across the University of Miami presenting research in fields ranging from medicine and computer engineering to literature an...

Congrats, Dr. @tiffany6390.bsky.social! 👏

news.miami.edu/stories/2025...

Are you a US-based PhD student WITHOUT summer funding who is interested in adolescent development, trans youth, and/or gender? Reach out to me about applying to join my lab in Summer 2026 for the VIPS program! psych.princeton.edu/diversity/vi...

Who's afraid of AI?

toronto2025.ai

Hi #canadian researchers - please sign this petition to help ensure funding isn’t cut to tri council agencies (NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR). We’re looking at potential 15% cuts to ALL federal spending including grants win.newmode.net/canadianasso...

congratulations!!!

two figurines on a white background. one side is labeled Labubu, with your typically furry Labubu figure. the other side is Lakiki, and it's fur has been photoshopped to be spiky.

📣📣📣 Hi Everyone! I'm accepting PhD students for the Fall 2026 cycle! Our lab topics include the developmental origins and elaboration of moral cognition/prosocial behavior, persistence, and optimism. More info below!!

Lazarus et al. (2025): A simple act with a lasting impact: Holding babies skin-to-skin in the NICU helped support their development and reduced differences linked to family income. Early touch can be a powerful way to promote equity from the very start #infancypapers doi.org/10.1111/infa...

Human newborns spontaneously attend to prosocial interactions Nature Communications - Abilities to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial actions are crucial for sustaining cooperative systems. Here, the authors show that human newborns with just 5 days...

New paper! Here (in Nature Communications) we (Ale Geraci, Luca Surian, Lucia Gabriella Tina, & I; work led/run by Ale) show that 5-day-old newborns selectively attend to two distinct forms of prosocial over antisocial action: approaching versus avoiding and helping versus hindering.
rdcu.be/evorW