🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

Come join us!

Our lab is hiring a part-time Philadelphia-based research assistant to help with data collection at our partner museum! This is a great opportunity for those interested in applying to jobs/programs in dev psych! For more info, see: learninglab.yale.edu/philly-app

Loved doing this more personal interview about my research! Read it to find out how my sister sparked my interest in psychology and to learn more about recent work in the lab

In 2017, Max Kleiman-Weiner and I worked on a Bayesian model for how children learn to calibrate effort from adult models. We never published the cogsci paper (didn't want to scoop myself at the time), so putting it on PsyArXiv now for all to see! osf.io/preprints/psya…

New preprint with Jessa Stegall @jessastegall.bsky.social, Emily Hembacher, Michael C. Frank, and Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon: Young children infer the informativeness of others' praise. osf.io/preprints/psya… Adults give children a lot of praise, but do children always trust it?

I'm here now: @julia-a-leonard.bsky.social

For decades, developmental psychologists have observed that optimism declines with age. Why does this seemingly positive behavior diminish over time? In our Nature Reviews Psych article, Jessica Sommerville and I offer an integrated theory. nature.com/articles/s4415…

Overparenting is on the rise and hurts children’s motivation starting in early childhood. How can we help parents step back? Our new paper in Child Dev shows that pointing out learning opportunities reduces overparenting. Led by amazing Reut Shachnai srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cd…

There is just over a week left to apply to the MindCORE Postdoctoral Fellowship Penn. Applications close Sunday, December 1. mindcore.sas.upenn.edu/post-doctoral-… Penn BGS GAPSA Linguistic Society of America Mahoney Institute for Neurosciences @UPenn

The call for applications for the Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship is now open! 🎉 The Program offers #fellowships to early- & mid-career researchers whose work is dedicated to improving the #learning & #development of children worldwide. For information on how to apply,

How do we think about our future learning curves for a new skill? 💭 Check out our new paper on people's intuitions about skill acquisition julia_a_leonard Sam McDougle

How do we keep children motivated in learning? 📚 Assistant Professor julia_a_leonard discusses the importance of encouragement and creating an environment where effort pays off for children’s development. 🌟

Congrats to my first PhD student Dr Xiuyuan Flora Zhang 张修远!!!!! Make sure to follow her amazing work on intuitive theories of acquisition!

Come check out the lab's research at SRCD this week! Society for Research in Child Development Leonard Learning Lab

Check out our symposium on *parents' lay theories of cognitive development* at #SRCD2025! How do parents intuitively assume prejudice, ability, and number develop? Ft. work by Reut Shachnai and julia_a_leonard, Dominic Gibson, PhD, and yours truly, discussed by Andrew Shtulman!

Honored to win the 2025 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award! You can read more about my research and journey here psychologicalscience.org/publications/o…

On 6/21, come to Amant Gallery (NY) for the exhibition On Education and a screening of Baby Group by Emanuel Almborg — with commentary by me! A joyful blend of art and science, the film explores how a group of babies behave in the absence of adults. amant.org/programs/1151-…

Wirecutter crowned Ben & Jerry’s the best vanilla ice cream. I scoffed. Our lab managers Surya and Nat ran a blind taste test. Guess what won? Ben & Jerry’s. Science is brutal. Leonard Learning Lab