Research Topics
■ Developmental research on social cognition from infancy to school age
■ Developmental research on language development and its cross-linguistic comparison
■ Empirical studies on parent-child and human-robot interaction

　Our lab, Comparative and Developmental Psychology, investigates the development of the human mind and behavior from infancy to school-age childhood. We address the "emerging" part of human life. Recognizing that humans are a species of animals, understanding human behavior truly requires considering its biological underpinnings. Therefore, we use scientific methods not only from experimental child psychology but also from comparative behavioral science (a branch of biology focusing on animal behavior) to explore children's psychological processes, behavior, and their interrelationships.
　To date, we have employed empirical methodologies to tackle various research topics, particularly social cognition in infancy, which includes understanding others, morality and prosociality, social learning, and language development. We conduct cognitive development experiments with infants and observational studies on parent-child/human-robot interactions in settings such as on-campus research labs and preschools.