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Cristine Legare, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Email: legare@psy.utexas.edu Phone: 232-8044 Office: SEA 5.216 See also Developmental Psychology and Cognition

Research Interests

Cognitive development, conceptual development and causal reasoning, knowledge acquisition and learning, culture and cognition

Dr. Legare received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2008. She studies cognitive development with a focus on causal reasoning, conceptual development, and problem solving. Her approach to studying these topics is to integrate theory and research from cognitive developmental psychology and anthropology to examine these basic cognitive processes in particular content areas and cultural contexts. In her current research she is investigating mechanisms of causal knowledge acquisition by examining the development of children's questions and explanations. Her interests also include the co-existence of scientific and religious explanatory frameworks across development.

Representative Publications

Legare, C.H., Wellman, H.M., & Gelman, S.A. (in press). Evidence for an explanation advantage in naïve biological reasoning. Cognitive Psychology.

Legare, C.H. & Gelman, S.A. (2008). Bewitchment, biology, or both: The co-existence of natural and supernatural explanatory frameworks across development. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 32, 607-642.

Gelman, S.A., Heyman, G.D., & Legare, C.H. (2007). Developmental changes in the coherence of essentialist beliefs. Child Development, 78, 757-774.

Heyman, G., & Legare, C.H. (2005). Children's evaluation of sources of information about traits. Developmental Psychology, 41, 636-647.

Heyman, G., & Legare, C.H. (2004). Children's beliefs about gender differences in the academic and social domains. Sex Roles, 50, 227-240.