Social Learning Lab

Stanford University

Welcome to Our Lab!

How do children learn from others? What enables humans to make inferences about other people’s mental states? And how does this ability develop over time?

At the Social Learning Lab, we study these very questions by investigating how children learn about the world through social interactions. To do our work, our lab uses diverse methods (e.g., behavioral experiments, fMRI) with human subjects of all ages.

Latest News

October 2023

SLL summer interns present at the SymSys Fall Poster Fair and Aaron presents at Psychology Colloquium lightning talks.

August 2023

The SLL summer interns give their final presentations highlighting their work over the quarter!

July 2023

The lab presents at CogSci 2023 in Sydney, Australia. Aaron and Peter received travel awards from CogSci this year!

June 2023

Joseph Outa (research coordinator) heads to a PhD program at Johns Hopkins University and Grace Keene joins as new research coordinator!

March 2023

The lab presents at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) conference in Salt Lake City, Utah!

October 2022

The lab presents at the Social Curiosity workshop in Göttingen, Germany!

June 2022

Yang Wu, the lab’s first post-doc, begins Assistant Professor position at University of Toronto Scarborough!

Teresa Garcia (lab manager) heads to a PhD program and Aneesa Conine-Nakano joins as the new lab manager.

May 2022

Congratulations! Griffin Dietz defends her PhD.

April 2022

Lab members attend CDS 2022 where Aaron presents a talk and poster.

Hyo receives the Steve Reznick Early Career Award.

June 2021

Mika Asaba defends her PhD and will begin a post-doc at Yale. Xi Jia, Brandon, and Jessa head to PhD programs!

We welcome Peter Zhu (graduate student), Kat Adams Shannon (post-doc), and Joseph Outa (research coordinator) to the lab!

April 2021

Lab members present at SRCD 2021!

January 2021

The lab is featured in Stanford News article highlighting our online testing system!

July 2020

The lab attends CogSci (virtually)!

June 2020

SLL hosts a webinar on online testing practices.

May 2020

Congratulations! Natalia Vélez and Sophie Bridgers successfully complete their theses defenses over Zoom.

April 2020

Amid the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders, the lab moves their research online and creates materials to share with other researchers.

January 2020

Hyo receives the 2020 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions!

Hyo, Sophie, and Mika attends BCCCD 2020, where Sophie presents!

December 2019

Hyo receives the Jacobs Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship!

October 2019

Our new paper in Nature Human Behaviour (Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, 2019) is featured in Stanford News!

June 2019

The lab welcomes our new lab manager - Stephen Sanders!

May 2019

Natalia Vélez receives the NIH F99/K00 (D-SPAN) Award! Congratulations Natalia!

April 2019

The lab submitted six CogSci papers, and 4 were accepted as talks, 2 as posters! Congratulations everyone!

March 2019

SLL attends SRCD in Baltimore, MD!

December 2018

Apply to our lab manager position! Check out our Join Our Lab page for more information.

September 2018

The lab is looking for new student Research Assistants! Check out our Join Our Lab page for more information.

July 2018

Hyo receives the James S. McDonnell Scholar Award!

June 2018

Natalia attends the Latin American School for Education, Cognitive and Neural Sciences in Chile.

April 2018

The lab submitted six CogSci papers, and all were accepted.

October 2017

SLL goes to the Cognitive Development Society meeting in Portland, OR.

July 2017

Hyo Gweon & Sophie Bridgers head to CogSci 2017: London!

June 2017

Congratulations! Lab affiliate Griffin Dietz has won the David M. Kennedy Prize for best Honors Thesis for her work entitled "Children's Use of Decomposition in Problem Solving as an Early Introduction to Computer Science."

May 2017

Our new paper (Gweon & Asaba, 2017) was featured in Stanford Report!

April 2017

4/13: Congratulations! The lab submitted four CogSci papers, and all were accepted as talks.

4/6-4/8: The lab travels to Austin, TX, to share their work at SRCD.

March 2017

3/17: Congratulations! Mika Asaba wins the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.

November 2016

Congratulations! Natalia Vélez presents her first fMRI poster at the Society for Neuroscience Conference.

September 2016

The lab wasn't quite ready to saw goodbye to Mika Asaba, our lab manager; instead, the lab welcomes her again, this time as a new grad student!

August 2016

The lab goes to CogSci!

June 2016

6/1-6/5: The lab attends the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Conference!

May 2016

5/18: PSYCH187 field trip to the Bay Area Discovery Museum!

March 2016

The lab says goodbye to our awesome research assistant, Sumudu!

February 2016

2/3: The lab cheers to submitting CogSci papers this year.

August 2015

8/20: Summer interns present their posters at the Psych Summer poster session.

June 2015

6/3: Congratulations! Undergraduate research assistants share their projects from the quarter.

April 2015

4/1: Congratulations! Our graduate students, Natalia Vélez and Sophie Bridgers, received National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.

March 2015

3/8: SLL goes on its first lab outing to Palo Alto Jr. Museum and Zoo to learn about owls.

February 2015

2/28: The lab celebrates its first night of scanning. Special thanks to Michael and Jesse from the Grill-Spector Lab for their help.

4/1: Congratulations! Our graduate students, Natalia Vélez and Sophie Bridgers, received National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.

January 2015

The lab welcomes Xuan Zhao, a visiting PhD student from Bertram Malle's lab at Brown.

September 2014

The lab holds its inaugural lab meeting and welcomes Sophie Bridgers, our new graduate student.

August 2014

Congratulations! Hyo is awarded the American Psychological Association Dissertation Award, Division 7: Developmental Psychology.

The lab welcomes Mika Asaba, our new lab manager, and Natalia Vélez, our new graduate student.

July 2014

The lab is born!