Elizabeth S. Spelke

My research probes the origins, development, and nature of human knowledge of space, number, and material objects. I have contributed to understanding of the perceptual and cognitive capacities of human infants, including infants' abilities to relate what they see to what they hear, to represent hidden objects, to reason in distinctive ways about inanimate object motion and human action, and to apprehend numerical and geometrical properties of the environment. I also have explored how distinct, early-developing cognitive systems interact to support new systems of knowledge in children and adults.