Publications

The names of our current and former lab members are in bold. These articles are posted here to facilitate the timely dissemination of scholarly work for individual, noncommercial use.

Wertz, A. E. (in press). Cognitive development. In M. Fisher (Ed.) The APA Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. APA Publishing.

Lucca, K., Yuen, F., Wang, Y., Alessandroni, N., Allison, O., Alvarez, M.., Axelsson, E. L., Baumer, J., Baumgartner, H. A., Bertels, J., Bhavsar, M., Byers-Heinlein, K., Capelier- Mourguy, A., Chijiiwa, H., Chin, C. S.-S., Christner, N., Cirelli, L. K., Corbit, J., Daum, M. M., Doan, T., Dresel, M. Exner, A., Fei, W., Forbes, S. H., Franchin, L., Frank, M. C., Geraci, A., Giraud, M., Gornik, M. E., Grosse Wiesmann, C., Grossmann, T., Hadley, I. M., Havron, N., Henderson, A. M. E., Higgs Matzner, E., Immel, B. A., Jankiewicz, G., Jędryczka, W., Kanakogi, Y., Kominsky, J. F., Lew-Williams, C., Liberman, Z., Liu, L., Liu, Y., Loeffler, M. T., Martin, A., Mayor, J., Meng, X., Misiak, M., Moreau, D., Nencheva, M. L., Oña, L. S., Otálora, Y., Paulus, M., Pepe, B., Pickron, C. B., Powell, L. J., Proft, M., Quinn, A. A., Rakoczy, H., Reschke, P. J., Roth-Hanania, R., Rothmaler, K., Schlegelmilch, K., Schlingloff-Nemecz, L., Schmuckler, M. A., Schuwerk, T., Seehagen, S., Şen, H. H., Shainy, M. R., Silvestri, V., Soderstrom, M., Sommerville, J., Song, H.-J., Sorokowski, P., Stutz, S. E., Su, Y., Taborda-Osorio, H., Tan, A. W. M., Tatone, D., Taylor-Partridge, T., Tsang, C. K. A., Urbanek, A., Uzefovsky, F., Visser, I., Wertz, A. E., Williams, M., Wolsey, K., Wong, T. T.-Y., Woodward, A. M., Wu, Y., Zhen Zeng, Z., Zimmer, L., & Hamlin, J. K. (2025). Infants’ social evaluation of helpers and hinderers: A large-scale, multi-lab, coordinated replication study. Developmental Science, 28, e13581. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13581 [OA link] 📝 

Smaldino, P. E., Pietraszewski, D., & Wertz, A. E. (2023). On the problems solved by cognitive processes. Cognitive Science, 47, e13297. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13297  [OA link] 📝 

Schlegelmilch, K., & Wertz, A. E. (2023). Grass and gravel: Investigating visual properties preschool children and adults use when distinguishing naturalistic images. Cognitive Development, 66, 101324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101324  [OA link] 📝

Schlegelmilch, K., & Wertz, A. E. (2022). Visual segmentation of complex naturalistic structures in an infant eye-tracking search task. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0266158. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266158 [OA link] 📝

Pietraszewski, D. & Wertz, A. E. (2022). Why evolutionary psychology should abandon modularity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17, 465-490. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621997113  [OA link] 📝

Fantasia, V., Oña, L. S., Wright, C., & Wertz, A. E. (2021). Learning blossoms: Caregiver-infant interactions in an outdoor garden setting. Infant Behavior and Development, 64, 101601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101601  📝

Gerdemann, S. C., & Wertz, A. E. (2021). 18-month-olds use different cues to categorize plants and artifacts. Evolution & Human Behavior, 42, 304-315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.12.003 [OA link] [OSF] 📝

McNamara, R. A., & Wertz, A. E. (2021). Early plant learning in Fiji. Human Nature, 32, 115-149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09389-6  [OA link] [OSF] 📝

Rioux, C., & Wertz, A. E. (2021). Avoidance of plant foods in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 57, 609-624. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001146  [OA link] 📝

Falck, A., Labouret. G., Izard, V., Wertz, A. E., Keil, F. C., & Strickland, B. (2020). Core cognition in adult vision: A surprising discrepancy between the principles of object continuity and solidity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149, 2250-2263.  https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000785  [OSF] 📝

Włodarczyk, A., Rioux, C., & Wertz, A.E. (2020). Social information reduces infants’ avoidance of plants. Cognitive Development, 54, 100867. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100867  📝

Wertz, A. E. (2019). How plants shape the mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23, 528–531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.04.009  [OA link]  📝

Elsner, C., & Wertz, A. E. (2019). The seeds of social learning: Infants exhibit more social looking for plants than other object types. Cognition, 183, 244–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.09.016  📝

Oña, L., Oña, L. S., & Wertz, A. E. (2019). The evolution of plant social learning through error minimization. Evolution & Human Behavior, 40, 447–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.05.009  📝

Schlegelmilch, K., & Wertz, A. E. (2019). The effects of calibration target, screen location, and movement type on infant eye-tracking data quality. Infancy, 24, 636-662. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12294  [OA link] 📝

Wertz, A. E., & Moya, C. (2019). Pathways to cognitive design. Behavioural Processes, 161, 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.05.013  📝

Wertz, A. E., & Wynn, K. (2019). Can I eat that too? 18-month-olds generalize social information about edibility to similar looking plants. Appetite, 138, 127–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.02.013  📝

Włodarczyk, A., Elsner, C., Schmitterer, A., & Wertz, A. E. (2018). Every rose has its thorn: Infants' responses to pointed shapes in naturalistic contexts. Evolution & Human Behavior, 39, 583–593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.06.001  📝

Kominsky, J. F., Strickland, B., Wertz, A. E., Elsner, C., Wynn, K., & Keil, F. C. (2017). Categories and constraints in causal perception. Psychological Science, 28, 1649-1662. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617719930  [OSF] 📝

Pietraszewski, D., Wertz, A. E., Bryant, G. A., & Wynn, K. (2017). Three-month-old human infants use vocal cues of body size. Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 284, 20170656. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0656  📝

Schlegelmilch, K., & Wertz, A. E. (2017). Estimating variability and accuracy in remote mode infant eye tracking. Proceedings of the 40th European Conference on Visual Perception (pp. 205-206). http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pec/collections/ecvp-abstracts/index/ecvp-2017  📝 

Strickland, B., Wertz, A. E., Labouret, G., Keil, F. C., & Izard, V. (2015). The principles of object continuity and solidity in adult vision: Some discrepancies in performance. Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, Journal of Vision, 15, 122. https://doi.org/10.1167/15.12.122  📝 

Wertz, A. E., & Wynn, K. (2014a). Selective Social Learning of Plant Edibility in 6- and 18-Month-Old Infants. Psychological Science, 25(4), 874-882. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613516145  [OA link] 📝

Wertz, A. E., & Wynn, K. (2014b). Thyme to touch: Infants possess strategies that protect them from dangers posed by plants. Cognition, 130(1), 44-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.09.002 [OA link] 📝

Wertz, A. E., & German, T. C. (2013). Theory of mind in the wild: Toward tackling the challenges of everyday mental state reasoning. PLoS ONE, 8(9), e72835. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072835  📝

Pietraszewski, D., & Wertz, A. E. (2011). Reverse engineering the structure of cognitive mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 209-210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11000380  📝

Wertz, A. E. (2011). Cognitive adaptation: Distinguishing between levels of analysis. Theory and Psychology, 21, 416-418. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543110210030802  📝

Wertz, A. E., & German, T. C. (2007). Belief-desire reasoning in the explanation of behavior: Do actions speak louder than words? Cognition, 105, 184-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.08.002  📝

Saudino, K. J., Wertz, A. E., Gagne, J. R., & Chawla, S. (2004). Night and day: Are siblings as different in temperament as parents say they are? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 698–706.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.5.698  📝