Contributor

Sandra Waxman

Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and Op-Ed Project Public Voices Fellow.

Sandra Waxman is the Louis W. Menk Chair in Psychology and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and taught at Harvard University before joining Northwestern in 1992. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Association for Psychological Sciences, she has received awards for her research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Waxman’s research is designed to discover how language and cognition come together in the developing mind. Adopting a cross-cultural, cross-linguistic approach, she identifies which language and cognitive capacities are available to guide infants from the very start, and how these are shaped by the powerful force of their experience. By examining the vital interaction between nature and nurture, her work illuminates how infants’ earliest capacities are shaped by the linguistic, social and cultural communities in which they live.

She has conducted research in a range of languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Korean, Indonesian) and within a range of communities (Native American (US), Indonesia, indigenous groups in Central and South America).

Waxman’s goal is to align state-of-the-art research in developmental science with the very real developmental challenges facing infants and young children. Understanding the powerful interactions between nature and nurture -- across development -- will help us rise to the challenge of addressing pressing issues including social disparities, education and globalization.

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