About us
More than a lab, we’re a community
We study how infants and young children develop through their everyday interactions with the world.
Our work brings together developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, ecological methods, naturalistic observation, and computational modelling to understand how developmental pathways emerge through the continuous coupling of child and environment.
The ELAN lab
Mission
What do we do?
We adopt an ecological and interactionist approach to the study of infant development.
Vision
Why do we do it?
To steer developmental psychology towards ecological and interactionist enterprises, to provide lasting knowledge.
Values
How do we do it?
Our guiding principles are curiosity and the pursuit of truth; transparency and open communication; inclusivity and collaboration.
Our Mission and Vision
The ability to adapt to different environments is at the core of human development.
Human infants are born with highly plastic brains and prolonged childhoods. This gives them an extraordinary capacity to adapt to the worlds around them. Yet we still know surprisingly little about how this process unfolds.
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One reason is methodological. Developmental science often eliminates important context, restricts infants’ movement, and studies brain, body, behaviour, and environment separately. These methods are useful for showing what infants can do under controlled conditions, but less suited to explaining how development emerges in the child’s richer, everyday world.
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Our mission is to help build a more ecological, interactionist, and dynamic developmental science.
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We use head-mounted cameras, motion sensors, eye tracking, fNIRS, naturalistic observation, longitudinal designs, and computational modelling to study infants as active participants in their own development.
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We use methods such as head-mounted cameras, motion sensors, eye tracking, fNIRS, naturalistic observation, longitudinal designs, and computational modelling to study infants as active participants in their own development.
Ultimately, we want to understand how children become adapted to different developmental worlds, why developmental pathways differ, and how this knowledge can help children and families thrive.
Through this approach, we aim to:
• Make a significant contribution to our understanding of how early cognitive abilities emerge in typically and atypically developing populations.
• Pave the way to interventions that help people live happier lives.
• Provide a supportive and stimulating environment to train the next generation of research scientists.
Our Values
Our work is guided by curiosity and the pursuit of truth.
We value reason, evidence, and a healthy sceptical stance. We aim to be open about our ideas, methods, uncertainties, and mistakes.
Science is also a human enterprise. We therefore value compassion, honesty, transparency, inclusivity, collaboration, and mutual respect.