Douglas A Behrend

Douglas A Behrend is a Professor in the Department of Psychology within the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Arkansas. He is actively engaged in research and teaching in developmental psychology, with a focus on child cognition and language development.

His research interests include child word learning, the role of song and speech in language acquisition, accent and dialect perception, whispering as a social cue, and the development of early beliefs and intellectual humility. He leads the WordPlay laboratory, which investigates how young children understand language and social information.

His recent publications (2008–2023) reflect a consistent focus on how children learn words from different types of speech, evaluate speaker reliability, and use linguistic cues in social decision-making. Themes across his work include the interplay between language, cognition, and social development in early childhood.

He teaches PSYC 3093 (Developmental Psychology), PSYC 4283 (Advanced Seminar), and PSYC 5013 (Advanced Developmental Psychology) at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Dr. Behrend earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1986. He has advised several graduate students who have co-authored his research. No scientific awards are listed in the provided text.

He is the director of the WordPlay laboratory, a research team dedicated to studying child language and cognition through behavioral experiments with children aged 5–18. The lab conducts studies on whispering, implausible beliefs, and social preferences in language use.