Department of Psychology, Tufts University

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Emily Bushnell
Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1979
emily.bushnell@tufts.edu

Dr. Bushnell's research interests include infant perception and cognition -- imitation of goal-directed actions; haptic perception and exploration, acquisition of perceptual-motor skills, evolution and development of tool using.

Representative Publications

Bushnell, E. W., & Boudreau, J. P. (1998). Exploring and exploiting objects with the hands during infancy. In K. Connolly (Ed.), The Psychobiology of the Hand (pp. 144-161). Cambridge, UK: Mac Keith Press.

Bushnell, E. W., & Baxt, C. (1999). Children’s haptic and cross-modal recognition with familiar and unfamiliar objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 1867-1881.

Roder, B. J., Bushnell, E. W., & Sasseville, A. M. (2000). Infants’ preferences for familiarity and novelty during the course of visual processing. Infancy, 1, 491-507.

Bushnell, E. W. (2000). Two steps forward, one step back. Infancy, 1, 225-230. (Invited commentary on target article by J. Campos in same issue).

Boudreau, J. P., & Bushnell, E. W. (2000). Spilling thoughts: Configuring attentional resources in infants’ goal-directed actions. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 543- 566.

Bushnell, E. W. (2005). Stats modules for babies! Computing conditional probabilities and weighted variance with rapid sampling: Comments on the presentations by Aslin and Banks. In C. A. Nelson (Ed.), Action as an Organizer of Learning and Development, Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology, vol. 33.

Striano, T., & Bushnell, E. W. (2005). Haptic perception of material properties by 3-month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 28, 266-289.

Bushnell, E. W., Sidman, J., & Brugger, A. E. (2006). Transfer according to the means in human infants: The secret to generative tool-use? In ROUX, V. and BRIL, B. (eds). Stone Knapping : the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominid behaviour (pp. 303 – 317). McDonald Institute monograph series, Cambridge, UK (Actes du workshop de Pont- à-Mousson, 21-24 novembre 2001).

Mumme, D. L., Bushnell, E. W., Lariviere, L. A., & DiCorcia, J. A. (in press). Infants’ Use of Gaze to Interpret Emotional Signals and Action Sequences. Invited chapter to be published in an edited volume on young children’s social cognition.

Brugger, A., Lariviere, L. A., Mumme, D. L., & Bushnell, E. W. Doing the right thing: Infants’ selection of actions to imitate from observed event sequences. Accepted for publication in Child Development.