I am an assistant professor of psychology at Union College (Schenectady, NY) where I run the Mind and Cognition (MaC) Lab. My research focuses on the development of cognition and imagination in early to middle childhood.

By drawing on theories of cultural learning and employing a mixed-methods approach (i.e., experiments, interviews, parent surveys, parent-child conversations), I explore how children from different cultural backgrounds learn what is real and what is possible.

Some of the questions I have explored are:

• How do children imagine alternatives to reality?
• How do these alternatives influence emotional experience and moral judgments?
• How do cultural factors determine the boundaries of these alternatives?
• How do children and adults reason about the phenomena that they cannot experience firsthand such as religious and scientific entities and claims?
• What are the origins of the perceived conflict between science and religion?
• How do seemingly contradictory scientific and religious explanations develop from childhood to adulthood?

Key publication: Payir, A., Corriveau, K., & Harris, P. L. (2023). Children’s beliefs in invisible causal agents – both religious and scientific. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 65. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2023.05.003