LEAD Lab
Welcome to the Learning, Education, and Development Lab (LEAD Lab) at Indiana University, Bloomington!
LEAD Lab is directed by Dr. Emily Fyfe in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Welcome!
About Us
Mission Statement
Children’s knowledge is continuously changing as they observe and interact with people and the world. In the LEAD Lab, our research focuses on the construction and organization of that knowledge with an emphasis on how children learn and solve problems in mathematics. We are motivated by a question facing scientists, psychologists, educators, and parents: How can we support children’s learning so that it leads to the creation of robust and meaningful knowledge?
Our Research
- Helps identify basic cognitive processes that support the development of mathematics knowledge
- Examines how to use that information to design effective learning techniques and materials
Our Goal
Our lab’s primary goal is to conduct studies in cognitive development with a focus on the development of mathematics knowledge and problem solving.
Our focus is to better understand how the learner and the learning environment interact to produce positive changes, especially in mathematics.
Children are continuously learning as they observe and interact with people and the world. Our research is in the area of cognitive development and the science of learning more broadly, with an emphasis on how children think, learn, and solve problems in mathematics. Our goals are to characterize changes in children’s knowledge over time and to evaluate the effects of formal and informal learning experiences. We use an interdisciplinary approach that capitalizes on perspectives from developmental psychology, cognitive science, and mathematics education. Also, we typically conduct behavioral experiments in which we manipulate one aspect of the learning environment and examine its causal impact on target learning outcomes. Additionally, we also track changes over time and conduct error analyses to examine the development of children’s misconceptions.
Dr. Emily Fyfe
Learning Education and Development Laboratory Research Program Director & Principle Investigator