David Rakison

David Rakison is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. His research focuses on infant perception, conceptual development, and causal reasoning, combining behavioral methodologies with computational modeling. He investigates how infants categorize objects, understand motion properties, and develop concepts through action and perception.

Research Interests:

• Developmental Psychology: Studying early cognitive and perceptual development.
• Computational Modeling: Building frameworks to understand infant learning mechanisms.
• Causal Reasoning: Exploring how infants infer causality and animacy from dynamic events.
• Evolutionary Perspectives: Examining evolved detection mechanisms for threats like snakes and spiders.

Recent work emphasizes developmental cascades—a theoretical framework to explain cumulative cognitive changes in infancy. His lab also investigates autism's impact on conceptual development and compares it with typically developing infants.

Awards & Grants: None explicitly listed in the provided materials.

Labs & Collaborations: Rakison leads a research lab focused on infant cognition, integrating experimental and computational approaches to understand foundational concepts in early childhood.