Dr. Amsterlaw was a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Before coming to the Institute, she earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the University of Michigan with Henry Wellman. Dr. Amsterlaw's research interests focus on how school-age children make sense of complex cognitive processes like reasoning, learning, and decision-making. Her research considers the development of children's beliefs about the goals, strategies, and "gold standards" that define these everyday cognitive processes, and how these beliefs serve to organize children's thinking in real-life situations. In her current work, she is examining children's knowledge about the difference between 'good' and 'bad' thinking.
