Lab Members

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  William E. Merriman, Ph. D.
  Principal Investigator
  Ph. D., University of Minnesota (1984)

  CONTACT:
  wmerrima@kent.edu
  (330) 672-2059
  Website

  Research Interests
  My research focuses on children’s language, memory, and thought, with an emphasis on word learning and metacognition in early childhood. Some current lines of research concern:
  Awareness of Gaps in Linguistic Knowledge -- What procedure does a young child use to decide that some word is unknown, that some object cannot be named, or that some utterance cannot be interpreted clearly? How is the accuracy of these decisions related to the efficiency of various cognitive processes?
  Overconfidence in Memory – Why do young children make such unrealistically optimistic predictions about their memory performance? Why do they become less optimistic as they get older?
  Word Learning– How do children infer the category that a word denotes from observations of how the word is used (and not used).

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  Kyle J. Henning, M.A.
  Graduate Research Assistant
  Ph. D. Candidate, Kent State University

  CONTACT:
  khenni11@kent.edu

  Research Interests
  My research focuses on language development in preschool aged children. More specifically, I am interested in the types of strategies these children use when learning new words and whether they can use metacognitive processes to guide their word-learning strategies.
  Other areas of interest: Memory development, Theory of Mind, Executive function & Decision making

Theresa Jacobs
Graduate Research Assistant
Kent State University

CONTACT:
tjacobs4@kent.edu

Research Interests
My research focuses on the metacognition and language development of preschool-aged children. Particularly, I am interested in children’s use of metacognitive strategies to learn words. Other areas of interest include children’s theory of mind, executive function, behavior, and decision making. 
 

• LAB ADDRESS
  Department of Psychology
  Kent State University
  186 Kent Hall
  Ph. 330-672-2059
   

• PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
  William Merriman
  Professor of Psychology 
  201 Kent Hall
  Ph. 330-672-2059
  wmerrim@kent.edu