Adena Schachner

I and my Mind and Development Lab study the cognitive processes that allow children to understand other people, and the social meaning of things people create, such as tools, art, music, and technology. My lab also studies the origins of musicality, asking why human musicality is so early developing, universal across cultures, and socially impactful from early in life. Our work has been funded by the NSF, NIH, APF, and GRAMMY Foundation.

• Bennette, E., Metzinger, A., Lee, M., Ni, J., Nishith, S., Kim, M., & Schachner, A. (2021). Do you see what I see? Children’s understanding of perception and physical interaction over video chat. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1-11, https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.276.
• Kim, M. & Schachner, A. (2023). The origins of dance: Characterizing the development of infants' earliest dance behavior. Developmental Psychology. 59(4), 691–706. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001436 
• Pesowski, M.L., Powell, L.J., Cikara, M., & Schachner, A. (2023). Interpersonal utility and children’s social inferences from shared preferences. Cognition. 232, 105344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105344
• Savage, P. E., Loui, P., Tarr, B., Schachner, A., Glowacki, L., Mithen, S., & Fitch, T. (2021). Music as a coevolved system for social bonding [target article]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44, E59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20000333