CUCHDS Publications

Research at CUCHDS spans a diverse range of sub-topics and is continuously evolving. If you're interested in exploring specific areas of our work, we've included links to recent articles authored by our researchers below.

Infant Research 

Frewin, K. L., Gerson, S. A., Vanderwert, R. E. and Gambi, C. 2025. Parent-reported relations between vocabulary and motor development in infancy: Differences between verbs and nouns. Infancy 30(1), article number: e12638. (10.1111/infa.12638)

Rapuc, S., Jary, S., Vanderwert, R. E., Odd, D. and Chakkarapani, E. 2025. Cognitive development at late infancy and school age in children cooled for neonatal encephalopathy. Pediatric Research (10.1038/s41390-025-04152-4)

Mitev, K., Frewin, K. L., Augustinova, M., Niedenthal, P. M., Rychlowska, M. and Vanderwert, R. E. 2024. The who, when, and why of pacifier use. Pediatric Research (10.1038/s41390-024-03540-6)

Rychlowska, M. and Vanderwert, R. 2020. The pacified face: early embodiment processes and the use of dummies. Frontiers in Psychology 11, article number: 387. (10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00387)

Gerson, S. and Stapel, J. 2020. Manual motor development. In: Benson, J. B. ed. Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development. Elsevier, pp. 281-289., (10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.23625-0)

Play and Social Learning

Keating, J., Hashmi, S., Vanderwert, R. E., Davies, R. M., Jones, C. R. G. and Gerson, S. A. 2024. Embracing neurodiversity in doll play: Investigating neural and language correlates of doll play in a neurodiverse sample. European Journal of Neuroscience 60(3), pp. 4097-4114. (10.1111/ejn.16144)

Hashmi, S., Vanderwert, R. E., Paine, A. L. and Gerson, S. A. 2022. Doll play prompts social thinking and social talking: representations of internal state language in the brain. Developmental Science 25(2), article number: e13163. (10.1111/desc.13163)

Hashmi, S., Vanderwert, R. E., Price, H. A. and Gerson, S. A. 2020. Exploring the benefits of doll play through neuroscience. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 14, article number: 560176. (10.3389/fnhum.2020.560176)

Gerson, S., Junge, C. and Meyer, M. 2023. Editorial: Early social experience: impact on early and later social-cognitive development. Frontiers in Psychology 14, article number: 1268725. (10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1268725)

Gerson, S. A. and Meyer, M. 2021. Young children’s memories for social actions: influences of age, theory of mind, and motor complexity. Child Development 92(1), pp. 142-156. (10.1111/cdev.13387)

Yuniarto, L. S., Gerson, S. A. and Seed, A. M. 2020. Better all by myself: Gaining personal experience, not watching others, improves 3-year-olds’ performance in a causal trap-task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 194, article number: 104792. (10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104792)

Executive Function Skills

Kubota, M. et al. 2023. The effect of metacognitive executive function training on children's executive function, proactive control, and academic skills. Developmental Psychology 59(11), pp. 2002-2020. (10.1037/dev0001626)

Memory

Morey, C. et al. 2025. Is verbal rehearsal strategic? An investigation into overt rehearsal of nameable pictures in 5- to 10-year-old children. Journal of Cognition and Development 26(1), pp. 50-69. (10.1080/15248372.2024.2389123)

Nikolov, T. Y., Allen, R. J., Havelka, J., Darling, S., van de Vegte, B. and Morey, C. C. 2025. Navigating the mind's eye: Understanding gaze shifts in visuospatial bootstrapping. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 78(2), pp. 391-404. (10.1177/17470218241282426)

Ramzaoui, H., Mathy, F. and Morey, C. C. 2025. Grouping by semantic and color similarity in visual working memory: An attentional mechanism, not compression mechanism. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (10.1037/xlm0001482)

Allen, R. J., Havelka, J., Morey, C. C. and Darling, S. 2024. Hanging on the telephone: Maintaining visuospatial bootstrapping over time in working memory. Memory & Cognition 52, pp. 1798-1815. (10.3758/s13421-023-01431-5)

Delooze, M. A., Guitard, D., Cowan, N. and Morey, C. C. 2024. Rapid source forgetting across modalities: a problem for working memory models. Memory & Cognition (10.3758/s13421-024-01664-y)

Howard, L. H., Waters, F. F. and Gerson, S. A. 2024. Social models influence visual perspective taking in memory. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 36(6), pp. 709-719. (10.1080/20445911.2024.2365464)

Overkott, C., Souza, A. S. and Morey, C. C. 2023. The developing impact of verbal labels on visual memories in children. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 152(3), pp. 825-838. (10.1037/xge0001305)

Vergauwe, E., von Bastian, C. C., Kostova, R. and Morey, C. C. 2022. Storage and processing in working memory: a single, domain-general resource explains multi-tasking. Journal of Experimental Psychology 151(2), pp. 285-301. (10.1037/xge0000895)

Curiosity 

Gruber, M. and Fandakova, Y. 2021. Curiosity in childhood and adolescence - what can we learn from the brain. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 39, pp. 178-184. (10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.031)

Cen, D., Teichert, E., Hodgetts, C. J. and Gruber, M. J. 2024. Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans. Communications Psychology 2, article number: 129. (10.1038/s44271-024-00174-6)

O'Donoghue, E., Cen, D. and Gruber, M. 2024. Disentangling the influences of curiosity and active exploration on cognitive map formation. [Online]. OSF. Available at: https://osf.io/wg3tm

Gruber, M. J. 2024. Curiosity satisfaction increases event-related potentials sensitive to reward. The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 36(5), pp. 888-900. (10.1162/jocn_a_02114)

Keller, N. E., Salvi, C., Leiker, E. K., Gruber, M. J. and Dunsmoor, J. E. 2024. States of epistemic curiosity interfere with memory for incidental scholastic facts. npj Science of Learning 9(1), article number: 22. (10.1038/s41539-024-00234-w)

Oosterwijk, S., Noordewier, M. K. and Gruber, M. J. 2024. Are you curious about curiosity?. Frontiers for Young Minds 12, article number: 1182072. (10.3389/frym.2024.1182072)

Bartlett, S., Sadler, W., Mason, R. and Gruber, M. J. 2024. The Curious Brain: Evaluation report. Project Report. Cardiff: Cardiff University.

Eschmann, K. C. J., Pereira, D. F. M. M., Valji, A., Dehmelt, V. and Gruber, M. J. 2023. Curiosity and mesolimbic functional connectivity drive information seeking in real life. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 18(1), article number: nsac050. (10.1093/scan/nsac050)

Murphy, C., Dehmelt, V., Yonelinas, A. P., Ranganath, C. and Gruber, M. J. 2021. Temporal proximity to the elicitation of curiosity is key for enhancing memory for incidental information. Learning and Memory 28(2), pp. 34-39. (10.1101/lm.052241.120)