Dr Katheryn Edwards

• PhD in Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington
• BSc (Hons, First-class) Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington
• Graduate Diploma in Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington
• MSc Energy Systems and Environmental Management, Caledonian University
• BA (Hons) Economics and Economic History, University of Warwick

Traditional false belief tasks indicate that belief reasoning emerges from about four years of age, whilst non-verbal measures infer that infants and toddlers are sensitive to others’ false beliefs. One explanation of these contradictory findings is that infants are capable of psychological reasoning, but direct verbal testing fails to reveal this due the demands placed on executive functioning. An alternative, two-systems account, suggests that infant success in spontaneous tasks is due to a low-level system, which allows efficient processing of belief-like states. Previously, the debate has focused on measuring eye-gaze in one-shot tasks. In a departure from this, the main thrust of my research is to provide new and converging behavioural data (using RTs and mouse-tracking analytic techniques) from adult samples to tease apart the 2-System accounts from rival accounts.

Edwards, K., & Low, J. (2019). Leve1 2 perspective-taking distinguishes automatic and non-automatic belief-tracking. Cognition, 193. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104017

Poulin-Dubois, P., Rakoczy, H., Burnside, K., Crivello, C., Dörrenberg, Edwards, K.,…. Ruffman, T. (2018). Do infants understand false beliefs? We don’t know yet – A commentary on Baillargeon, Buttelmann and Southgate’s commentary. Cognitive Development, 48, 302-315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.09.005

Low, J., & Edwards, K. (2018). The curious case of adults’ interpretations of violation-of-expectation false belief scenarios. Cognitive Development, 46, 86-96, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.07.004

Edwards, K., & Low, J. (2017). Reaction time profiles of adults’ action prediction reveal two mindreading systems. Cognition, 160, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.12.004

Edwards, K., Maymon, C., Peloquin, C., Sivanantham, S., & Low, J. (in press). False belief understanding: On cognitive development, cognitive competence & cognitive systems. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development.

Invited Symposium Panelist: “Characteristics of Efficient Mindreading in Uncharted Settings” at the International Convention of Psychological Science, Paris, France (2019).

• Graduate Student Affiliate of the Association for Psychological Science
• Graduate Membership of the British Psychological Society (with the Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership)
• Member of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology
• Member of Psi Chi