Karen Adolph

Karen Adolph is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University, specializing in developmental psychology and motor development research.

Dr. Adolph's research focuses on behavioral flexibility—how people learn to adapt to changes in their bodies and skills and to variations in the environment. Her work centers on infant development, examining how infants learn to move within the context of continual physical development. She investigates how developmental changes in motor skills generate new opportunities for learning, considering learning as embodied in infants' growing bodies, embedded in physical environments, and enculturated through social interactions.

Her research provides significant insights into the relationships between perception and action during developmental stages, revealing surprising findings about how motor development influences cognitive growth. Dr. Adolph presented her work at the Michael Chandler Lecture Series at UBC's Department of Psychology on April 7, 2016, with her talk titled 'Learning to Move and Moving to Learn' highlighting how developmental changes in motor skills create new learning opportunities for infants.