Board Elections

My research focuses on the cognitive and developmental processes underlying children’s information seeking and evaluation, particularly when engaging in STEM learning. I consider CDS my academic “home” and I am committed to seeing the society continue to grow and thrive.

I currently serve on the CDS board and on the book award committee and I am eager to further serve our community as CDS president. I am running for this position now as I anticipate being on sabbatical when my tenure as president would begin, making the timing ideal. As president, I would continue successful ongoing projects including the mentoring program and the Social Justice Bibliography. I would also leverage my background (including being a native Spanish speaker and a first-generation scholar) and experience to develop new initiatives aimed at: 1) promoting CDS membership and participation among researchers in the Global South, and 2) supporting CDS members in sharing their research with caregivers, educators, and the general public. I would also welcome suggestions for other new ways that the society could support its members and the community at large.

I have attended all but one CDS meeting since 2001 and I have found each of them valuable to my professional and personal development. However, I am sensitive to the fact that travel restrictions, rising costs, and reductions in grant support are making it increasingly difficult to attend. Thus, as president, I would also prioritize making attendance at future CDS meetings as affordable and accessible as possible.

I went to the first Cognitive Development Society meeting in 1999. No one else from my graduate program went to North Carolina. As an accidental developmentalist – someone who went to grad school in cognitive psychology – the conference exposed me to topics I didn’t know I was interested in. The talks challenged the way I thought. I gave a poster (20 pages, each mounted on cardboard) on my first dissertation experiments. I never felt like I belonged in the field until CDS.

I’ve been a researcher in cognitive development for 25+ years. I was part of a team that built the blicket detector, and used it to study children’s causal reasoning and conceptual development. I’ve studied pretense, theory of mind, social learning, and children’s prosocial behavior. My current work focuses on STEM learning and engagement from parent-child interaction in informal settings. I’ve led curriculum reform and helped write my university’s operating budget. I’ve lobbied Congress to increase funding for NSF. I write a blog about the hidden curriculum at my university and in graduate school applications. I’ve been to every CDS meeting, except those that coincided with my children’s births. I was honored to serve as CDS Treasurer, and as Program Chair for Louisville.

At the end of the first meeting, I thanked Steve Resnick for organizing the conference. The experience made me feel part of something. I’m running for CDS President to carry on the society’s tradition of promoting excellent research and welcoming new scholars into the field.

My research focuses on how children develop skills in regulating their thoughts and actions, widely known as executive function skills. My work has advanced our understanding of these skills as rapidly developing in early childhood, linked to many later outcomes and shaped by experience. I have helped usher in a new wave of theory and research on executive function development, integrating cognitive, social, and cultural perspectives. I have contributed to the Cognitive Development Society in several ways. I have served as an editorial board member for the society’s flagship journal for the last four years. During that time, I co-edited a special issue on executive function in the journal that produced 8 of its 10 most-cited articles over the past three years. I also co-authored an article in the journal proposing ways to advance theory and reduce bias in cognitive developmental science by broadening convenience samples (Doebel & Frank, 2023). I have participated in the society’s conference since 2009, serving as a reviewer and presenter, and as the organizer of an NSF-funded preconference workshop on open developmental science. As a faculty member at a highly diverse public university and first-generation college graduate, I have a unique understanding of how to make the field more inclusive and supportive of scholars from varied backgrounds. My goals align with CDS’s mission to bring together researchers with diverse perspectives to advance theory, research, and practice in cognitive development. If elected, I would work to expand opportunities for collaboration, mentorship and inclusion throughout the society.

Sophie Charles is a fourth-year PhD student at Columbia University. With her advisor Larisa Heiphetz Solomon, Sophie researches moral development. Specifically, her work examines how children evaluate others’ moral and immoral behaviors. For example, how do children reason about the moral behaviors of individuals who differ from themselves? How do they incorporate societal context into their moral judgments? Prior to graduate school, Sophie was a research assistant in the Cognitive Development Labs at Wesleyan University (PIs: Hilary Barth and Anna Shusterman). There, Sophie contributed to research on children’s early numerical cognition. Sophie’s research experience spans many disciplines: moral, social, and cognitive development, and she looks forward to representing the interests of all these disciplines, while also hearing the concerns from others.

Beyond her research contributions, Sophie is committed to improving the conference experience for early career researchers. She understands the challenges that graduate students and postdocs face when attending academic conferences, from financial barriers and networking intimidation to navigating unfamiliar professional spaces. Her dedication to equity in these settings reflects the kind of inclusive thinking that strengthens our field. Her perspective will be invaluable as CDS continues to develop programming that supports researchers at all career stages, for the next CDS and beyond.

Sophie’s experience as an interdisciplinary researcher and her commitment to equity make her an excellent candidate for the CDS student board position. She would contribute meaningfully to conversations about how our organization can better serve its diverse membership and advance developmental science in accessible, inclusive ways.

I am a fourth year PhD student in Cognitive Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, studying how episodic memory and social cognition contribute to episodic future thinking in both social and nonsocial contexts. My research explores how children imagine future events for themselves and others, and how these processes relate to Theory of Mind, executive function, and academic outcomes. I have published on spontaneous episodic future thinking and the role of inhibitory control in planning, with additional manuscripts under review examining how memory and future thinking shape preference understanding, social planning, and academic achievement.

Beyond research, I am deeply committed to promoting equity and inclusion in developmental science. As an immigrant and Asian woman studying at a small public university, I have seen firsthand the barriers faced by international students, first-generation scholars, low-income scholars, and those from institutions with limited resources. These experiences motivate my goal to make CDS a more inclusive space, where mentorship programs, conference participation, and leadership opportunities are accessible to all students regardless of background or institutional privilege.

Through leadership roles with ManyBabies, the International Congress of Infant Studies, my PhD program, and a university-wide statistics collaborative, I have worked to strengthen the science community by organizing workshops on open science and research methods, serving as liaison between students and senior leadership, and implementing initiatives that improve the overall student experience. I would bring this same commitment to collaboration, transparency, and student advocacy to the CDS Student Board.

Annie Schwartzstein is a fourth-year PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz, working under Hyesung Grace Hwang, studying how children learn about their political worlds and use political markers to shape their cognitive and social reasoning. Previously, Annie has had a broad range of research experience, including serving as a Lab Manager at the Princeton Baby Lab and assisting with political psychology research as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota.

Her positions across multiple domains of developmental science and psychology help her to bridge gaps across the cognitive developmental landscape. In addition, as she has held research and academic positions at both public and private universities and worked in labs studying language, social, and cognitive development, she has an expansive understanding of challenges facing developmental researchers. With this, she is passionate about collaborating with her colleagues to come up with innovative solutions to these challenges.

As a student board member, Annie hopes to contribute to initiatives that increase opportunities for early-career scholars to engage with the CDS community, particularly those from underrepresented institutions and backgrounds. She aims to support efforts that make CDS’s resources, mentorship, and conference participation more accessible to a diverse range of researchers.

Drawing on her diversity of training and experiences across different developmental subfields, Annie will bring a collaborative, inclusive, and thoughtful perspective to board discussions. She is deeply committed to CDS’s mission of advancing rigorous and innovative research in cognitive development while fostering a supportive and diverse scientific community.