Susan Carey

Susan Carey
Born	1942
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Fields	developmental psychology, cognitive development
Institutions	Harvard University
Education	London University, Radcliffe College
Website personal page

Susan E. Carey (born 1942) is an American psychologist. She is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She is an expert in language acquisition and children's development of biological concepts and is known for introducing the concept of fast mapping, whereby children learn the meanings of words after a single exposure. Her research focuses on analyzing philosophical concepts, and conceptual changes in science over time. She has conducted experiments on infants, toddlers, adults, and non-human primates.

She was born in 1942. Her parents were William and Mary. Later, her father remarried to a woman, Joan, who currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carey's studies focus on the development of children and adults and the cultural construction of concepts over time.

Carey received a B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1964, a Fulbright scholarship to study in University of London in 1965, and a Ph.D. in Experimental psychology from Harvard University in 1971. She was employed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1972 to 1996 in the Psychology Department of Brain and Cognitive development and New York University from 1996 to 2001 before she joined the faculty at Harvard University in 2001.

On returning to Harvard, Carey began working alongside Elizabeth Spelke, and they started a Developmental Studies lab. Carey also studied alongside George Miller, Jerome Butler, and Roger Brown. She conducted experiments on infants, toddlers, adults, and non-human primates. Carey coined the term "Quinian bootstrapping," a bootstrapping process that historians and philosophers look at on conceptual change.

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