Department of Developmental Psychology: Welcome!

Developmental Psychology investigates age-related changes in behavior and experience that occur across the lifespan of an individual. Research examines different areas of development, e.g., cognitive, emotional, or social capabilities, and asks questions such as: At which age and how exactly do the changes occur? Which factors (e.g., in the individual or the environment) are the causes of developmental changes?

Recent research foci of our department include empirical studies on

(social-)cognitive development in early infancy (mainly understanding of other people’s actions, imitative learning, control of intentional action),
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (neural correlates of cognitive development)
relations between cognitive abilities (mainly executive functions, theory of mind) and developmental problems in middle childhood,
development in adolescence and in emerging adulthood,
relations of learning and development.

Research methods include eye-tracking, EEG, and video-based behavioral analyses.

Projects

Crossing-Projekt (DFG FOR 2253) (until 2024)

Crossing the borders: The interplay of language, cognition, and the brain in early human development

PIER-Project (DFG GRK 1668)

Intrapersonal developmental risk factors in childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal perspective

Laboratories

BabyLAB

Investigates the cognitive development of children from the age of 4 month onwards

Videostudio

Production of video based footage for psychological behavior analysis and stimulus presentation in experimental settings

Recent publications

Brandt, A., Bondü, R., & Elsner, B. (2024). Profiles of executive functions in middle childhood and prediction of later self-regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1379126. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1379126

Theuer, J. K., Koch, N. N., Gumbsch, C., Elsner, B., & Butz, M. V. (2024). Infants infer and predict coherent event interactions: Modeling cognitive development. PLoS ONE, 19(10): e0312532. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312532

Adam, M., Elsner, B., & Zmyj, N. (2024). Perspective matters in goal-predictive gaze shifts during action observation: Results from 6-, 9-, and 12-month-olds and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 249, 106075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106075

Trouillet, L., Bothe, R., Mani, N., & Elsner, B. (2024). Investigating the role of verbal cues on learning of tool-use actions in 18-and 24-month-olds in an online looking time experiment. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, 2, ArtID 1411276. doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1411276

Pflüger, M., Buttelmann, D., & Elsner, B. (2024). How children come to (not) detect and apply multiple functions of objects: Rethinking perseveration and functional fixedness. Cognition, 251, Article 105902. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105902

Trouillet, L., Bothe, R., Mani, N., & Elsner, B. (2024). The impact of goal saliency and verbal information on selective imitation in 16- to 18-month-olds. Infancy, 29, 713-728.doi: 10.1111/infa.12601

Bothe, R., Eiteljoerge, S., Trouillet, L., Elsner, B., & Mani, N. (2024). Better in sync: Temporal dynamics explain multisensory word‐action‐object learning in early development. Infancy, 29, 482-509. Registered Report Stage 2 https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12590

Eiteljoerge, S., Elsner, B., & Mani, N. (2024). Word-object and action-object learning in a unimodal context during early childhood. Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.7

Bothe, R., Trouillet, L., Elsner, B., & Mani, N. (2024). Words and arbitrary actions in early object categorization: weak evidence for a word advantage. Royal Society Open Science, 11, ArtID: 230648. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230648

Vanoncini, M., Hoehl, S., Elsner, B., Wallot, S., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Kayhan, E. (2024). Mother-infant social gaze dynamics relate to infant brain activity and word segmentation. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 65, ArtID 101331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101331