About

Lisa Feigenson is a professor affiliated with the Laboratory for Child Development at Johns Hopkins University, housed within the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding how infants and young children perceive and make sense of the world around them. The lab investigates fundamental questions about early cognitive development, including memory for hidden objects, the developmental foundations of mathematical thinking, children's logical reasoning abilities, and the impact of surprise on infants' learning processes. The lab's work has gained recognition in prominent media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and Time Magazine, highlighting the significance and public interest in their findings. Through a combination of in-person and online studies involving children from birth to age ten, Feigenson's research employs engaging experimental methods like simple games and puppet shows to measure children's responses and cognitive abilities. The lab also actively involves undergraduate students in research, fostering a collaborative academic environment.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Developmental psychology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Communication

Selected publications

• "Core perception" cannot ignore issues of conceptual content and functional role

  PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · 2026-03-19

  preprintOpen access

  Bai et al. argue that core knowledge is perceptual because infants often appear to represent core entities like objects, numbers, and agents similarly to adults, and adults' performance on tasks probing these representations demonstrates signatures of perception. We suggest that this framing casts aside two interrelated issues central to understanding the nature of core knowledge: conceptual content and functional role.

  Publisher

• ManyNumbers 3: A Multi‐Lab Study of Demographic Correlates of Early Number Knowledge

  Developmental Science · 2026-04-20

  article

  Large scale studies have documented socioeconomic (SES) and racial/ethnic disparities in children's standardized math achievement at kindergarten entry. These early math skills predict future mathematics achievement and career success. However, limited research has been conducted using large sample sizes to understand how SES and race/ethnicity are related to children's numerical skills at even younger ages. The current study aims to investigate sociodemographic variability in three fundamental areas of early numeracy: nonverbal numerosity discrimination, rote counting, and cardinal number word knowledge. In addition, we will examine if the relations between numerical skills might be explained by their shared correlations to sociodemographic factors and if differences in numerical skills between sociodemographic groups can be explained by variability in working memory. Finally, we also investigate whether childcare attendance moderates early sociodemographic differences in numerical abilities. To achieve these goals, data from children aged 2; 6-6; 0 will be gathered from ∼ 45 US sites, drawn from a larger multi-lab international project (ManyNumbers project). The findings of this research will enhance our understanding of early emerging variability in numerical skills and provide insights into developing responsive and inclusive educational practices that support diverse learning needs in the early years. SUMMARY: Early mathematical skills are crucial for long-term academic and career achievement. SES and race/ethnicity-related disparities in math achievement emerge as early as preschool. Most studies use standardized math assessments that combine different numerical skills to assess achievement gaps, leaving uncertain which specific skills vary with demographic variables. We explore disparities in developmentally significant numerical skills and their relation to demographic variables. We also report relations between WM, childcare attendance and numerical skills. Data from approximately N = 1080 children aged 2;6-6;0 will be collected from ∼ 45 US labs, including demographic information and numeracy measures.

  PublisherDOI

• "Core perception" cannot ignore issues of conceptual content and functional role

  2026-03-20

  articleOpen access

  Bai et al. argue that core knowledge is perceptual because infants often appear to represent core entities like objects, numbers, and agents similarly to adults, and adults' performance on tasks probing these representations demonstrates signatures of perception. We suggest that this framing casts aside two interrelated issues central to understanding the nature of core knowledge: conceptual content and functional role.

  PublisherDOI

• Goldilocks Pattern of Learning after Observing Unexpected Physical Events

  Underline Science Inc. · 2025-06-18

  otherOpen access

  Infants learn better following expectancy violations. Yet it is unknown whether this surprise-induced learning operates across development, is all-or-none or graded, and whether surprise directly mediates it. We addressed these questions by showing adults events depicting varying numbers of violations. In Experiments 1 and 2, adults saw events with 0 to 3 physical violations, then heard a novel verb for the presented action. Adults learned better after observing violations; notably, their learning exhibited a Goldilocks pattern—initially increasing with number of observed violations, then declining. Experiment 3 asked whether this learning enhancement was driven by surprise itself, or by the search for explanations for the surprising events. Adults saw events with different numbers of violations, then rated their surprise and generated candidate explanations. Whereas surprise increased monotonically with violations, explanation-generation exhibited a Goldilocks pattern like that in Experiments 1-2. This suggests that surprise-induced learning may reflect the search for explanations.

  PublisherDOI

• Core knowledge influences explanatory reasoning in children and infants

  Underline Science Inc. · 2025-06-18

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  Explanations help us make sense of the world. How does early knowledge shape explanatory reasoning? We first asked whether children’s knowledge of object physics shapes their explanation preferences (Experiment 1). In previous work, children preferred teleological explanations (referencing purposes) to mechanistic explanations (referencing underlying processes) for natural events — a domain where children may lack robust knowledge. Here, preschoolers (N=26) saw natural events, non-surprising physical events, and surprising physical events. Then, they chose between teleological and mechanistic explanations. Children strongly preferred mechanistic explanations, suggesting that early physical knowledge influences explanatory reasoning in children. We then asked whether this extends to infants (Experiment 2). Infants (N=23) watched a ball bouncing off (non-surprising) or rolling through a wall (surprising event). Following the surprising event, infants showed systematically different looking patterns at explanatory vs non-explanatory information (e.g., wall with a hole vs. no hole). Thus, core object knowledge influences explanatory reasoning in early development.

  PublisherDOI

• Infants Recognize the Negative Impact of Phone Distraction on Performance

  Infancy · 2025-03-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Seeing adults use cellphones is a common daily experience for infants, yet little is known about how infants think about others' cellphone use. Do infants recognize that phone usage can affect the user's behavior? Here we asked whether infants expect a person's task performance to be impaired by phone use. Twenty-month-old infants watched adults building block towers. One adult did this while also using a phone, either looking at the screen and scrolling (Experiment 1; N = 24) or simply talking (Experiment 2; N = 24). Across both experiments, infants looked longer when the person who had been using the phone built a taller tower than the person who had not been using the phone, compared to the reverse. This suggests that infants expected phone usage to negatively impact performance. Thus, early in development, children recognize that cell phone use can affect people's goal-directed actions; this may be one example of a broader understanding of the impact of multitasking on performance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Violations of social expectations enhance infants' learning

  Cognition · 2025-07-02

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  When infants see objects behave in surprising ways, they not only notice these violations, but also experience enhanced learning about the objects. Although infants also notice when social agents behave in surprising ways, it is unclear whether violations of social expectations similarly enhance learning. Here we asked whether surprising events in the social domain amplify learning. In three experiments, 16- to 19-month-old infants saw a person behave either expectedly or unexpectedly towards an object, and then had the opportunity to learn about the object or person involved in the event. Experiment 1 presented infants with a person who produced an emotional reaction that was congruent with a target object, as expected, or produced a reaction that was surprisingly incongruent; Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with a person whose preference among two different goal objects remained consistent, as expected, or suddenly reversed, defying expectations. Across Experiments 1-3, infants exhibited enhanced learning about both the object and, to some extent, the person involved in the surprising event. Combined with previous findings, these findings suggest that early expectations support learning in the social domain as well as in the physical domain.

  PublisherDOI

• Young children distinguish the impossible from the merely improbable

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-11-04 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  From infancy, children show heightened interest in events that are impossible or improbable, relative to likely events. Do young children represent impossible and improbable events as points on a continuum of possibility, or do they instead treat them as categorically distinct? Here, we compared 2- and 3-y-old children's learning (N = 335) following nearly identical events that were equi-probable, improbable, or impossible. We found that children learned significantly better following impossible than possible events, no matter how unlikely. We conclude that young children distinguish between the impossible and the merely improbable.

  PublisherDOI

• Children's representation of coincidence

  Cognition · 2024-06-27 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• “Yay! Yuck!” toddlers use others’ emotional responses to reason about hidden objects

  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · 2022-05-26 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Young children show sensitivity to others' emotions, discriminating between facial expressions and using them to help guide their behavior. Beyond providing information about how others are feeling, emotional expressions also can support inferences about the non-social world. Here, in four experiments, we investigated 18- to 28-month-old children's ability to use others' emotional responses to reason about physical objects. We found that 24- to 26-month-old children successfully used an agent's incongruent emotional responses ("Yay! Yuck!"), but not congruent emotional responses ("Yay! Wow!") to infer the presence of multiple hidden objects (Experiment 1). When two different agents produced the incongruent emotional responses, children did not infer that multiple objects must be present (Experiment 2), implicating early recognition that different people can have different emotional reactions towards the same entity. Younger, 20-month-old children failed to use incongruent emotional responses to make inferences about hidden objects (Experiment 3), although they succeeded at using contrasting words in an otherwise identical task ("A blick! A fep!"; Experiment 4). These results show that young children can use other people's emotional responses to reason about the physical world-an ability that develops in the second year of life.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03HD054416

  NIH · $162k · 2009

• Understanding error-driven learning in infancy and early childhood

  NSF · $650k · 2021–2025

• The Role of Surprise in Enhancing Early Learning

  NIH · $440k · 2014–2017

• NIH Grant R01HD057258

  NIH · $1.6M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• Justin Halberda

  Johns Hopkins University

  33 shared

• Melissa E. Libertus

  University of Pittsburgh

  21 shared

• Alexis Sierra Smith-Flores

  University of California, San Diego

  12 shared

• Jinjing Wang

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  10 shared

• Jennifer M. Zosh

  10 shared

• Aimee E. Stahl

  College of New Jersey

  9 shared

• Shipra Kanjlia

  Johns Hopkins University

  8 shared

• Darko Odic

  University of British Columbia

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences
• Boyd McCandless Early Career Award from the American Psychol…
• Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation