Research Interests:

My PhD focuses on the development of a minimal sense of commitment in young children. Commitment, as traditionally conceived by philosophers, involves a relatively high degree of cognitive sophistication; the agents involved in commitment-relations are usually assumed to possess notions of normativity, moral obligation, and mindreading, along with the ability to produce and understand speech acts of promising. Over the past decade a number of studies have emerged which suggest that young children are sensitive to certain cues and contexts which are relevantly commitment-like, prior to their being cognitively sophisticated enough to engage in full-blown commitment. I wish to understand what form this sense of commitment might take, what further social cognitive capacities it involves, and what factors might modulate that sense of commitment.

My PhD is part of a wider ERC-funded project entitled 'The Sense of Commitment'. Beyond developmental psychology and social cognition, my interests lie in numerical cognition and the philosophy of mind broadly construed.

Contact Details

Supervisors:

John Michael
Sotaro Kita