Susan Birch
Associate Professor
Psychology
The University of British Columbia
Canada
Biography
Dr. Susan Birch is a Associate Professor at The University Of Victoria.
Research Interest
The overarching goal of my research is to more fully understand the development of social perspective taking, or ‘theory of mind’ broadly construed. I’m interested in perspective-taking abilities across the lifespan. How do we reason about what someone else knows, feels, intends, etc. and how do these abilities impact other aspects of development? One line of research explores limitations in perspective-taking and the factors associated with these limitations (e.g., cognitive biases, source monitoring difficulties). A second line of research focuses on how children’s perspective-taking abilities influence what, and how, they learn from others. For example, how do they make inferences about who is a credible, or knowledgeable, source of information? A third line of investigation explores the relationships between different aspects of social perspective taking and social-emotional health and development.
