Elizabeth Boerger

Elizabeth Boerger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Slippery Rock University, specializing in developmental psychology with emphasis on child and adolescent development across cognitive, social, and moral domains.

Her core research areas include:

• Child Development
• Adolescent Development
• Cognitive Development
• Social Development
• Moral Development
• Imagination-Creativity Relationships
• Belief Formation in Childhood

Dr. Boerger investigates children's reasoning about dreams, magical causality, and fantastical entities (e.g., Candy Witch), examining how developmental stages affect distinctions between reality and fantasy. Her work integrates epistemic vigilance and cognitive boundary development across early childhood through adolescence.

Publication analysis (2002-2023) shows evolution from foundational dream/magical thinking studies to contemporary research linking openness to experience with creative cognition. A persistent theme is children's epistemic reasoning about impossible entities, evidenced by longitudinal Candy Witch investigations and cross-cultural comparisons of fantasy comprehension.

Scientific awards: None documented in source material.

Advising and grant activities are unreported in available information; no laboratory teams or collaborative research structures are specified.