Amanda Woodward
Dean, Division of the Social Sciences, and William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Psychology
Bio
Amanda Woodward is Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences and the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology. Professor Woodward has pioneered the development of experimental methods to investigate social cognition in infants and young children. Her research has yielded fundamental insights into infants’ social understanding and the processes that support conceptual development early in life. Her current work investigates infants’ sensitivity to interpersonal social structure, the effects of cultural and community contexts in shaping children’s social learning strategies, and the neural processes involved in early social-cognitive development. She was a founding member of the Center for Early Childhood Research and currently directs the Infant Learning and Development Laboratory and chairs the Developmental Program. Professor Woodward’s research has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research, the APA Boyd McCandless Award for an Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology, and the John Merck Scholars Award. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association.
Selected Publications
Novack, M. A., Filippi, C. A., Goldin-Meadow, S. & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Actions
speak louder than gestures when you are 2 years old. Developmental Psychology.
Krogh-Jespersen, S. & Woodward, A. L. (2018). Reaching the goal: Active experience
facilitates 8-month-old infants’ prospective analysis of goal-based actions. Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology, 171, 31-45.
Krogh-Jespersen, S., Kaldy, Z., Carter, A., Groth, A., & Woodward, A. L. (2018). Goal
prediction in 2-year-old children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder: An eyetracking study. Autism Research.
Liberman, Z., Howard, L. H., Vasquez, N. M., & Woodward, A. L. (2018). Children’s
expectations about conventional and moral behaviors of ingroup and outgroup members,
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 165, 7-18.
Vaish, A., Grossmann, T., & Woodward, A. (2008). Not all emotions are created equal: the negativity bias in social-emotional development. Psychological bulletin, 134(3), 383.
Sommerville, J. A., Woodward, A. L., & Needham, A. (2005). Action experience alters 3-month-old infants’ perception of others’ actions. Cognition, 96(1), B1-B11.
Woodward, A. L. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor’s reach. Cognition, 69(1), 1-34.
Spelke, E. S., Phillips, A., & Woodward, A. L. (1995). Infants’ knowledge of object motion and human action.
CV