Expert Profile
Susan Birch, PhD Yale
Associate Professor
Campus Location
Fields
Expertise
- Social perspective taking
- social learning
- social cognition
- imitation
- nonverbal behavior
- confidence
- communication
- decision-making
- impression formation
- child development
- the study of children and adults' social perspective taking abilities (i.e., their abilities to reason about other peoples' mental states--their intentions, knowledge, and beliefs) and how their abilities to take another person's perspective impacts how they form impressions of others, learn from others, communicate with others, and informs a range of socials. Of particular interest is a) how children make inferences about what is credible information to learn (e.g., how they decide whether someone is a credible source of information based on how confident that person seems) and b) how a widespread bias in perspective taking referred to as 'the curse of knowledge bias' (a difficulty reasoning about a more naive perspective as the result of being biased by one's current knowledge) can impair communication (both written and in person) and decision-making across a range of fields (politics, law, education, economics, medicine, etc.)
Interview Language(s)
- English
Contact Information
Susan Birch
Email: sbirch@psych.ubc.ca
Phone: 604-822-3994
Website: http://kidstudiescentre.com/
Alternate Contact
Erik Rolfsen
UBC Media Relations
Tel: 604-822-2644
Cell: 604-209-3048
Email: erik.rolfsen@ubc.ca