Teresa Flanagan (she/her)

Interestingly, we found a change in age in how children reason about coincidences – which should not require an explanation. 7-9-year-olds, but not 6-year-olds, believed that coincidences do not need an explanation, similar to adults.

We found this across various topics, from biological and psychological phenomena to religious, nature, and physics events.

Children love asking for explanations, but why is that? Our new paper, with @AlejandroVeP, @TamarKushnir, and Shaun Nichols, at JECP, shows that 6-9-year-old believe that there must be an explanation for all phenomena in our world, regardless of topic: doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp…

Know someone who is looking into psych & neuro graduate school? Duke's Anti-Racism Community is hosting a FREE virtual office hours program! Have them sign-up to have their materials reviewed by experienced and friendly reviewers. Link below ⤵️ 📷✨

@LaurenGirouard1 @NSF Congrats!!!

So... I've been keeping a secret, but I got my award notice today, so the cat is FINALLY out of the bag... Starting on January 1st, 2025, I'll be an @NSF SBE Postdoctoral Fellow!

New paper out in @CognitionJourn exploring children’s and adults’ trust in inaccurate robots!

@XinZhao1 @TamarKushnir @APA Notably, we found that the influence of culture and statistical evidence varied for each action type. For example, U.S. and Chinese children had similar social inferences about game rules, but differed in whether they thought the game rules could be changed.

@XinZhao1 @TamarKushnir @APA We used a social generalization method in two studies and found that U.S. and Chinese preschoolers' generalizations were on a continuum: with word labels being most social, preferences being most personal, and object functions and game rules falling somewhere in the middle.

How do preschoolers decide whether an action is social or personal? In our new paper, with @XinZhao1, Fei Xu, and @TamarKushnir at @APA JEP General, we look at the differences in U.S. and Chinese children's inferences by action and statistical evidence: doi.org/10.1037/xge000…

@LaurenGirouard1 @UMich @UMichConceptLab @YYingXu @jennyradesky Congrats!!

This May I head to @UMich to join the @UMichConceptLab (Dr. Susan Gelman), the Learning Media Lab (@YYingXu), & the Radesky Lab (@jennyradesky) as an NICHD T32 research fellow to launch an interdisciplinary project on children’s intuitions about generative AI. A gratitude 🧵:

Had an amazing time talking to @paigeemiranda about our recent study on children’s beliefs about technologies!

@ZFiniasz @mercedes_munoz_ @JessaStegall @TamarKushnir @DrMeltemYucel @PearlHanLi I love my robots

@TMFlanagan1 is a doctor!! Congrats on defending your dissertation, you did an awesome job! 🤖

Big thing happened yesterday: I defended my dissertation! I am incredibly grateful for the support from my community ✨ so excited to continue working on children’s technology use as a post-doc

Proud mentee moment: watching my amazing advisor, @TamarKushnir, give the presidential address at #SPP2023

So excited for SPP this week!

You can also find a summary of some of our findings in a recent @DukeU article: today.duke.edu/2023/04/kids-j…

Children also thought that the technologies should not be harmed, regardless of type, even though they thought Alexa and Roomba have less physical experiences than the Nao. However, belief in a technology's agency declines with age

We found that children think about these technologies differently. For example, while emotions are usually tied to physical experience, children think Alexa's emotions are tied to mental capabilities - which is most predictive of children thinking a technology is like a person!

Ever wonder what kids think about Amazon Alexa or Roomba? How does this compare to their judgments of advanced robots, like the Nao? In our new paper, with Gavin Wong and @TamarKushnir, at @APA Developmental Psychology, we look at this in 4-11y/os: doi.org/10.1037/dev000…

You would think that after all this time working on children’s agency beliefs that I would know how to spell anthropomorphic correctly - and yes it took me three tries to spell it right for this tweet 🤦‍♀️