Susan Gelman

Susan A. Gelman (born July 24, 1957) is a Heinz Werner Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the topics of cognitive development, language acquisition, categorization, inductive reasoning, causal reasoning, and relationships between language and thought. Gelman subscribes to the domain specificity view of cognition, asserting that the mind is composed of specialized modules subserving specific cognitive functions.

Gelman was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. She was also formerly President of the Cognitive Development Society (2005-2007).

Her brother is the statistician Andrew Gelman at Columbia University.

Education and awards

Gelman received a B.A. in psychology and classical Greek from Oberlin College in 1980 and a Ph.D. in psychology with a minor in linguistics from Stanford University (advisor: Ellen Markman) in 1984, since which time she has been employed at University of Michigan. Her research has been recognized by numerous awards including a J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), the James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship (2007-2008), the Distinguished Scientific Award from the American Psychological Association for Early Career Contribution to Psychology (1991), the American Psychological Foundation Robert L. Fantz Award (1992), the Eleanor Maccoby Book Prize from Division 7 of the American Psychological Association (2005) for The Essential Child, the Developmental Psychology Mentor Award, Division 7, American Psychological Association (2012), and the G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contribution to Developmental Psychology, Division 7, American Psychological Association (2016).

Representative publications

• Gelman, S. A., Taylor, M G., and Nguyen, S. (2004). Mother-child conversations about gender: Understanding the acquisition of essentialist beliefs. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Volume 69, No. 1.
• Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gelman, S. A., and Bloom, P. (2000). Young children are sensitive to how an object was created when deciding what to name it. Cognition, 76, 91-103.
• Gelman, S. A. (2000). The role of essentialism in children's concepts. In H. W. Reese (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior, Vol. 27 (pp. 55-98). San Diego: Academic Press.
• Gelman, S. A., and Heyman, G. D. (1999). Carrot-eaters and creature-believers: The effects of lexicalization on children's inferences about social categories. Psychological Science, 10, 489-493.

External links

• Biography
• Susan Gelman's CV
• The Conceptual Development Lab at University of Michigan
• "The Essential Child" at Amazon