elizabeth.bonawitz [at] rutgers.edu
Phone
973-353-3944
Office Location
Rutgers University, Psychology Department, 101 Warren Street, Newark, NJ 07102
Smith Hall Room 334
Office Hours
Th 3:30PM-4:15PM
Research Initiatives
My research bridges two research traditions: Cognitive Development and Computational Modeling. By bridging these methods, I hope to understand the structure of children's early causal beliefs, how evidence and prior beliefs interact to affect children's learning, the developmental processes that influence children's belief revision, and the role of social factors (such as learning from others) in guiding learning.
Publications
Bonawitz, E., Denison, S., Gopnik, G., & Griffiths, T.L. (2014) Win-stay, lose-shift: A simple sampling algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference. Cognitive Psychology, 74, 35-65.
Bonawitz, E., Denison, S., Griffiths, T., & Gopnik, A. (2014) Probabilistic Models, Learning Algorithms, Response Variability: Sampling in Cognitive Development. Trends in Cognitive Science, 18, 497-500.
Bonawitz, E. & Shafto, P. (2016) Computational models of learning during development, social influences. Current Opinions in Behavioral Science, 7, 95-100.
Bonawitz, E.B., & Lombrozo, T. (2012) Occam's Rattle: Children's use of simplicity and probability to constrain inference. Developmental Psychology, 48, 1156-1164.
Bonawitz, E.B., van Schijndel, T., Friel, D., & Schulz, L. (2012) Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning. Cognitive Psychology, 64(4), 215-234.