Deepthi Kamawar

Research Interests

My research interests are in the area of children’s cognitive development and their ability to deal with representations. My research has focused on children’s ability understand that people’s minds represent the world in particular ways (which may or may not be correct), and it is on the basis of these representations that we predict or explain behaviour ( known as Theory of Mind). For example, people look for things where they represent them to be (i.e., think they are), not necessarily where the things are. My research has also focused on the constraints that are placed on descriptions of people’s beliefs and thoughts on the basis of their representations (opaque contexts). I am also interested in the developmental aspects of a variety of representation types (e.g., mental representation, the representation of language and the representation of number). Finally, my research also focuses on other topics such as children’s developing notion of ‘intention’ (purposeful behaviour) and its expression in language.

Children’s Representational Development Lab