Karen Wynn
| Karen Wynn | |
|---|---|
Karen Wynn, 2011
|
|
| Born |
December 18, 1962 Austin, Texas |
| Residence | New Haven, Connecticut |
| Citizenship | U.S., Canadian |
| Fields | Psychology, Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology |
| Institutions | Yale University, University of Arizona |
| Alma mater |
McGill University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D) |
| Doctoral advisor | Susan Carey |
| Notable awards | National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award, American Psychological Association Early Career Award. Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science |
Karen Wynn (born December 18, 1962) is a Canadian and American Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. She was born in Austin, Texas and grew up on the Canadian prairies in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her research explores the cognitive capacities of infants and young children. She directs the Infant Cognition Laboratory in the Psychology Department at Yale University.
Wynn received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from McGill University in 1985, and her PhD in Cognitive Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Her first faculty position was at the University of Arizona which she took upon graduating from MIT in 1990. She joined the Yale University Psychology Department in 1999.
Karen Wynn is known for her pioneering work on infants' and children's early numerical cognition. Some of her most influential research on this topic, published in the scientific journal Nature in 1992, reported that five-month-old human infants are able to compute the outcomes of simple addition and subtraction operations on small sets of physical objects.
Thirty-two five-month-old infants participated in the experiment. Infants were randomly assigned to two-groups ('1+1' and '2-1'). In the 1+1 condition, infants were presented with a single doll. The object was then hidden from view by a small screen. An experimenter brought a second identical doll into the infant's view, and then placed it behind the screen (out of the infant's sight). In the 2-1 condition, a similar procedure occurred. The infant was presented with two dolls, which were then hidden from view by a screen. The experimenter removes one of the objects within the sight of the infant. In both conditions, the set-up was designed so that the infants would witness a mathematical operation being performed (either addition or subtraction), but would not be able to see the final result. For both groups, after this sequence was complete, the screen was removed to reveal either one or two objects. This process was repeated six times for each infant, alternating between one-item and two-item final displays. Looking time (the amount of time that the infant remained visually fixated on an object while remaining attentive to the display) was measured.
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