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Elizabeth S. Spelke

Elizabeth S. Spelke

Award Badge
Best Female Scientists
2025

D-Index & Metrics

Best Female Scientists

D-Index
121
Citations
66710
World Ranking
522
National Ranking
309

Psychology

D-Index
120
Citations
67022
World Ranking
255
National Ranking
163

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2025 - Research.com Best Female Scientists Award
  • 2014 - Kurt Koffka Medal, Giessen University
  • 2009 - Jean Nicod Prize, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
  • 2002 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • 2000 - APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, American Psychological Association
  • 2000 - William James Fellow Award, Association for Psychological Science (APA)
  • 1999 - Member of the National Academy of Sciences
  • 1997 - Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 1988 - Fellow of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Overview

Elizabeth S. Spelke is affiliated with Harvard University in the United States and has contributed extensively to the field of psychology, with a focus on developmental and educational psychology. Their work spans several subfields including social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and statistics and probability.

Their research primarily explores topics related to child and animal learning development, cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills, neuroendocrine regulation and behavior, action observation and synchronization, mathematics education and teaching techniques, psychology of moral and emotional judgment, and language development and disorders.

Frequent coauthors who have collaborated with Elizabeth S. Spelke include Brandon Matthew Woo, Samuel A. Mehr, Shari Liu, Tomer Ullman, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum.

Spelke's publications have appeared repeatedly in venues such as Open Mind, PLoS ONE, Developmental Science, Nature, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Selected recent papers by Elizabeth S. Spelke include:

  • Online Developmental Science to Foster Innovation, Access, and Impact (2020) - Trends in Cognitive Sciences
  • Across demographics and recent history, most parents sing to their infants and toddlers daily (2021) - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
  • Toddlers' social evaluations of agents who act on false beliefs (2022) - Developmental Science
  • Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships (2022) - Science
  • Object permanence in newborn chicks is robust against opposing evidence (2024) - arXiv (Cornell University)

Elizabeth S. Spelke has been recognized with a number of awards over their career, including the Kurt Koffka Medal from Giessen University (2014), Jean Nicod Prize awarded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 2009, and election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2002.

Additional honors include the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology and William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (both in 2000), membership in the National Academy of Sciences (1999), fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997), and fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1988).

Best Publications

  • Core systems of number

    Lisa Feigenson;Stanislas Dehaene;Elizabeth Spelke

  • Sources of Mathematical Thinking: Behavioral and Brain-Imaging Evidence

    S. Dehaene;E. S Spelke;P. Pinel;R. Stanescu

  • Large number discrimination in 6-month-old infants.

    Fei Xu;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Origins of knowledge.

    Elizabeth S. Spelke;Karen Breinlinger;Janet Macomber;Kristen Jacobson

  • Principles of Object Perception

    Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Object permanence in five-month-old infants

    Renée Baillargeon;Elizabeth S. Spelke;Stanley Wasserman

  • Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?: A Critical Review.

    Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • The native language of social cognition

    Katherine D. Kinzler;Emmanuel Dupoux;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Domain-specific knowledge and conceptual change.

    Susan Carey;Elizabeth Spelke

  • Initial knowledge: six suggestions

    Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Perception of partly occluded objects in infancy

    Philip J. Kellman;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications

    Marc D. Hauser;Fiery Cushman;Liane Young;R. Kang-Xing Jin

  • Origins of Number Sense Large-Number Discrimination in Human Infants

    Jennifer S. Lipton;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy: Instruction Limits Spontaneous Exploration and Discovery

    Elizabeth Bonawitz;Patrick Shafto;Hyowon Gweon;Noah D. Goodman

  • Newborn infants perceive abstract numbers

    Vé Ronique Izard;Coralie Sann;Elizabeth S. Spelke;Arlette Streri

  • A geometric process for spatial reorientation in young children

    Linda Hermer;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Ontological categories guide young children's inductions of word meaning: object terms and substance terms.

    Nancy N. Soja;Susan Carey;Elizabeth S. Spelke

  • Log or Linear? Distinct Intuitions of the Number Scale in Western and Amazonian Indigene Cultures

    Stanislas Dehaene;Véronique Izard;Elizabeth S. Spelke;Pierre Pica

  • Modularity and development: the case of spatial reorientation

    Linda Hermer;Elizabeth Spelke

  • Human spatial representation: insights from animals.

    Ranxiao Frances Wang;Elizabeth S Spelke

  • Infants' knowledge of object motion and human action.

    Elizabeth S. Spelke;Ann Phillips;Amanda L. Woodward

Frequent Co-Authors

Stanislas Dehaene
Stanislas Dehaene Collège de France
Mahzarin R. Banaji
Mahzarin R. Banaji Harvard University
Katherine D. Kinzler
Katherine D. Kinzler University of Chicago
Susan Carey
Susan Carey Harvard University
Kristina R. Olson
Kristina R. Olson University of Washington
Claes von Hofsten
Claes von Hofsten Uppsala University
Carol S. Dweck
Carol S. Dweck Stanford University
Rochel Gelman
Rochel Gelman Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Marc D. Hauser
Marc D. Hauser Harvard University

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