Doctoral Student in Psychology
Cognition & Perception, Developmental

Research

The first two years of life are characterized by dramatic developmental changes in infants’ bodies, brains, skills, and experiences. My research addresses how infants learn about the world in the context of continual and widespread developmental change. The primary aim is to elucidate the developmental relations among action, perception, and cognition. In particular, I investigate how infants’ developing motor skills promote learning. New motor skills open up new opportunities for perceptual exploration. New ways of exploring, in turn, provide infants with new information about the physical world. And perceptual information is used to guide motor actions adaptively as infants cope with psychological and physical changes in real time and over development.

I investigate the reciprocal relation between learning and development by studying the emergence of postural control, manual actions, and visual perception. The ideas are inspired by a developmental systems approach. A primary focus is on describing the pathways of development, even when the course of development takes surprisingly twisted and non-obvious routes. Through a cascade of developmental events, changes in one domain may affect development in other domains far afield. Thus, by describing the pathways of development, from ongoing changes in motor ability and exploration to advances in perception and cognition, my research provides insights into major theoretical questions regarding the origins of learning.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D. Candidate, Experimental/Developmental Psychology. New York University.
M.A., Psychology, 2008. New York University.
B.S., Psychology, 2005. Penn State University.

Selected Publications

Soska, K.C., Galeon, M.A., & Adolph, K.E. (under review). Breaking symmetry: Spontaneous movements of the free hand during unimanual object exploration in infants.

Soska, K.C., Adolph, K.E., & Johnson, S.P. (in press). Systems in development: Motor skill acquisition facilitates three-dimensional object completion. Developmental Psychology.

Soska, K.C., & Johnson, S.P. (2008). Development of three-dimensional object completion in infancy. Child Development, 79, 1230-1236.

Johnson, S. P., & Soska, K. C. (2008). Object concept. In M. M. Haith and J. B. Benson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development (Vol. 2, pp. 469-478). San Diego, CA: Elsevier.

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Address

Kasey C. Soska
Department of Psychology
New York University
6 Washington Place, Room 458
New York, NY 10003
212-998-7979 (office)
212-998-9058 (lab)
email: kasey.soska@nyu.edu

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