Henry M. Wellman

Biosketch

Henry, M. Wellman is the Harold W. Stevenson Collegiate Professor, Emeritus, at the University of Michigan. He earned his BA in Psychology from Pomona College in Claremont CA and his Ph.D in Child Psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 1975. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Cognitive Development Society where he is also past-president. Awards include the William James award from APS, the Award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Developmental Psychology from APA, a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan, Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, and mentoring awards from both APA and APS.

Research Interests

Because humans are such a social species, social cognition is needed to navigate their world. Human social cognition centers around a construal of self and others in terms of mental states (such as beliefs, desires, and intentions), often called an everyday theory of mind. Theory-of-mind understandings begin in infancy and develop dynamically across childhood. Dr. Wellman's research addresses this development of theory of mind using a variety of methods—infant looking-time paradigms, longitudinal and microgenetic designs, meta-analyses, experimental and observational methods, as well as neurophysiological brain-based techniques—and addresses three sets of overlapping questions: (1) What connected progressions of understanding characterize theory-of-mind development for normally developing children as well as delayed individuals (e.g., those with autism and with deafness)? (2) What factors shape children’s burgeoning understandings (including conceptual-learning, familial-conversational, and cultural-socialization factors) and how does developmental change occur? (3) What brain substrates support and engender theory-of-mind reasoning and development? Understanding theory of mind development is important because this characteristically human social cognition is crucial for the achievement of abilities to communicate, to make friends and affiliations, to cooperate and deceive, to learn from and teach others.