Dr.  Natasha Z. Kirkham BA (Toronto)  BSc (Toronto) Ph.D (Cornell)

Position:     Lecturer in Psychology; RCUK Fellow in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development Office: Room  513,  Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, Malet Street, WC1E 7HX Phone:       +44 207 631 6590      Email:      natasha.kirkham@gmail.com

Research

I am interested in the development of visuo-spatial understanding, cognition, and attention in infants and preschool age children. I am involved in two streams of research, one of which addresses the question of how infants learn about their visuospatial environment with regard to the statistical regularities inherent in their perceptual world, and the other of which investigates the roles of attention and memory in both preschoolers’ and adults’ task switching abilities. I employ several different methodologies in my research projects, using both corneal reflection eye-tracking and habituation/dishabituation with infants, executive function tasks with preschoolers/adults, and EEG/ERP recordings from infants.

Students

Deborah Hendersen (Stanford University): Children’s understanding of fantasty vs. reality (with Herb Clark).

Hanna Muenke (Stanford University): Cognitive control and inhibitory mechanisms in infants (with Michael Ramscar).

Jennifer Wagner (Stanford University):  Knowledge of numerosity in infancy (with Susan Johnson).

Rachel Wu: Inferences Categorization of Emotional Expressions in Infancy 

Current collaborations:

Ian Gotlib – (Stanford University): Processing of emotional expressions in infants of depressed mothers

Scott Johnson (UCLA): Perceptual learning in infancy

Ellen Markman – (Stanford University): Toddlers’ use of imitation during learning

Michael Ramscar - (Stanford University): Neural correlates of response conflict in children

Daniel Richardson – (UC Santa Cruz and University of Reading): Encoding location for memory

Daphna Shohamy – (Columbia University): Neural  correlates of feedback-based learning in children

Dave Sobel – (Brown University): The development of causal learning

Publications

In press

Kirkham, N. Z. (in press).  Altogether now: Learning through multiple sources. In S. P. Johnson (Ed.), Neoconstructivism: The new science of cognitive development.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, S. P., Fernandes, K. J., Frank, M. C., Kirkham, N. Z., Marcus, G. F., Rabagliati, H., & Slemmer, J. A.  (in press). Abstract rule learning for visual sequences in 8- and 11-month-olds. Infancy.

Recent publications:

Kirkham, N. Z., Slemmer, J. A., Richardson, D.C., & Johnson, S. P. (2007).  Location, location, location:  Development of spatiotemporal sequence learning in infancy. Child Development, 78, 1559-1571.

Sobel, D. M., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2007).  Interactions between causal and statistical learning approaches.  In A. Gopnik & L. Schulz (Eds.), Causal learning (pp. 139-153). Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Richardson, D. C., Dale, R. A. C., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2007). The art of conversation is co-ordination: Common ground and the coupling of eye movements during dialogue.  Psychological Science, 18.

Sobel, D. M., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2007).  Bayes nets and Babies: Infants’ developing representations of causal knowledge.  Developmental Science, 10, 298-306.

Sobel, D. M., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2006).  Blickets and babies: The development of causal reasoning in toddlers and infants.  Developmental Psychology, 42, 1103-1115.

Richardson, D.C., & Kirkham, N.Z. (2004). Spatial indexing in adults and six month olds: evidence from eye tracking.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 46-62.

Kirkham, N.Z. , Cruess, L.M., & Diamond, A. (2003). Helping Children Apply their Knowledge to their Behavior on a Dimension-Switching Task. Developmental Science, 6, 449-467.

Kirkham, N.Z., & Diamond, A. (2003).  Sorting between theories of perseveration:  Performance in conflict tasks requires, attention, and inhibition. Developmental Science, 6, 474-476.

Diamond, A., Kirkham, N.Z., & Amso, D. (2002). Conditions under which Young Children CAN Hold Two Rules in Mind and Inhibit a Prepotent Response. Developmental Psychology, 38, 352-362.

Kirkham, N.Z., Slemmer, J.A., & Johnson, S. P. (2002). Visual statistical learning in infancy: evidence of a domain general learning mechanism. Cognition, 83, B35-B42.

Kirkham, N.Z., Slemmer, J.A., & Johnson, S. P. (2001). Visual statistical learning in infants. Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Erlbaum: Mawhah, NJ

Canfield, R. L., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2001). Infant cortical development and the prospective control of saccadic eye movements. Infancy, 2, 197-211.

Diamond, A., Churchland, A., Cruess, L.M., & Kirkham, N.Z. (1999). Early developments in the ability to understand the relation between stimulus and reward. Developmental Psychology, 35(6), 1507-1517.

Jacques, S., Zelazo, P.D., Kirkham, N.Z., & Sencesen, T.K. (1999). Rule selection and rule execution in preschoolers: An error-detection approach. Developmental Psychology, 35(3), 770-780.