Core Faculty of the Developmental Program
Kathleen Bloom, Associate Professor
(BSc, Loyola, Chicago; PhD, North Carolina)
The creation of new knowledge has its own value, but it is also driven by the researcher’s desire to make a difference in some way to the larger society. For that to happen, research results have to find their way to the people who can put them to use: policy makers, practitioners, the private sector, and the public. Knowledge mobilisation is the study and practice of research impact. My work in knowledge mobilisation (also called knowledge transfer, translation, exchange, and management) began as Director of Research Works! for child literacy (www.research-works.ca), a Community-University Research Alliance funded by SSHRC (http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts/ugrad/profiles_professors/KathleenBloom.html). As I expanded my work in knowledge transfer beyond the field of literacy, I co-founded the Canadian Centre for Knowledge Mobilisation (www.cckm.ca). With colleagues and students from across Canada, we create innovative and efficient tools, techniques, and products to bring information and research findings to stakeholders in health, education, and social services. At Knowledge Impact Strategies Consulting Ltd (www.kimpact.ca), we develop knowledge transfer services and products for organizations such as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (www.cifar.ca), and the BC Health of Population Networks (www.msfhr.org). The growing need for professionals trained in knowledge transfer has led the Faculty of Arts to create graduate courses, research projects, and Canada's UW Science Shop (www.scienceshop.ca). This work is featured in my video interview for The Mark (www.themarknews.com/videos/468). The UW Science Shop is part of a global network (www.scienceshops.org) of students and faculty who donate their research skills to benefit local communities.
Ori Friedman, Assistant Professor
B.Sc. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Boston College)
My research investigates the developmental origins of concepts underlying abstract social reasoning. One line of research investigates children's reasoning about beliefs and desires; a second line investigates children's ability to engage in and recognize pretend play; and a third line investigates children's and adults' reasoning about ownership of property.
Mathieu Le Corre, Assistant Professor
B.Sc. (McGill), Ph.D. (NYU)
Thanks to Piaget's pioneering work, the study of cognitive development has become a thriving field of scientific inquiry. But what exactly is cognitive development? We roughly know what it means to talk about organs developing. But what do we mean when we talk about concepts or cognition developing? Are all concepts innate, potentially available from the beginning of life? Or do they really develop, undergoing changes as dramatic as the transitions from the first few cells that make up a zygote to sophisticated, differentiated organs like eyes, lungs, and hands? If they develop, what do they develop out of, and what makes them change? These are the fundamental questions I struggle with.
Currently, I am asking these questions in the context of studies of the acquisition of knowledge of numbers in childhood. Research on infants has revealed that we have surprisingly sophisticated arithmetic abilities in the first year of life. I am studying what aspects of common knowledge of numbers (e.g. that a list of symbols can be used to represent numbers, that numbers are ordered, that there are infinitely many numbers) are already present in our infant arithmetic abilities, and what aspects require real "cognitive development"; i.e. the creation of new mental structures. I am also interested in studying the role of our capacity to create and manipulate complex arbitrary symbols (e.g. five million million millions) in the development of mathematical systems that are significantly more powerful than our infant arithmetic abilities.
Daniela O'Neill, Associate Professor
(BSc, Toronto; PhD, Stanford)
My research investigates the development of language and cognition in early childhood (1 to 5 years) with a particular focus on children's early use of language (pragmatic language development) and how it is influenced by children's developing understanding of their own and other people's minds (e.g., adapting their communication to take into account different perspectives or knowledge states of communicative partners). My studies examine these developments in communication in a broad sense, and include the study of children's gestures as well as spoken language; the study of children's communication in naturalistic as well as laboratory settings; and the study of children's communicative abilities in many forms such as everyday talk with parents and siblings, peer-to-peer conversation, story telling and story comprehension. My research also includes the development of a standardized parent-report measure - the Language Use Inventory for Young Children: An Assessment of Pragmatic Language Development - intended to provide norm-referenced scores for use in both research and clinical contexts for children 18 - 47 months of age. Canadian standardization of the Language Use Inventory (LUI) has just been completed with over 3500 parents and children from all across Canada
Much more detailed information about my research studies and the Language Use Inventory is available at the website for my research lab, the UW Centre for Child Studies, at: http://www.childstudies.uwaterloo.ca/.Here you will also find PDF copies of all my published papers.
I welcome inquiries from undergraduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral students wishing to study in my lab. Inquiries from researchers or clinicians interested in using the LUI are also welcome..I also welcome inquiries from the media regarding my research or related topics..
Katherine White, Assistant Professor
(BA, Cornell; PhD, Brown)
My research explores what infants and toddlers know about language (their own, or language in general) and how they come to know it: What knowledge and abilities do infants bring to the task of language acquisition, and how are they altered by experience with the native language? My work primarily investigates these questions with respect to early perceptual language development (in infants and toddlers aged 6-24 mos), with a focus on the acquisition of the speech sound system and early word learning.
