The Center for Applied Cognitive Science is a multi-disciplinary center for research to advance global cognitive science by bringing together researchers in the biological, cognitive, social, and educational sciences with practitioners, designers, and community partners.

Our team harnesses insights about how the mind works to advance the global science of learning and to design more effective behavioral and social change interventions.

We conduct interdisciplinary and comparative research using mixed-methodologies emphasizing community engagement, equity, and international development.

Research Areas

Public Health

We leverage insight from social and biological sciences to develop innovative solutions to pressing concerns in health and medicine.

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Education

We harness the empirical tools of cognitive science and related social scientific disciplines to improve educational outcomes.

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Cognitive Science

We study the capacity to learn, create, and transmit culture. We are particularly interested in studying cumulative culture.

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Child Development

We take a collaborative and contextual approach to studying core topics in child development.

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Highlighted Projects

Featured

The Coexistence of Scientific and Religious Explanations Across Cultures and Development

How scientific and religious explanations develop and are used to reason about diverse phenomena

Ritual, Community, and Conflict

Examining the role of ritual in child development, social behaviour, and the evolution of political systems

Thinkery Connect: A Museum-University-Community Research Partnership

A museum-university-community research partnership

Recent Articles

Publications All

Schools as cultural reproduction devices (PDF)

Fong, F.T.K., Erut, A., & Legare, C.H. (2023). Schools as Cultural Reproduction Devices. In J.J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, and R. Kendal (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution (online edn). Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.75.

Teaching Controversial Topics Such as Evolutionary Theory: Tips and Tools (PDF)

Legare, C.H. & Buss, D.M. (2023). Teaching controversial topics such as evolutionary theory: Tips and tools. In J. Stoner, P. Carrese, & C. McNamara (Eds.) Free speech and intellectual diversity in higher education (pp. 197-202). Lexington Books.

Quantifying quality: The impact of measures of school quality on children’s academic achievement across diverse societies (PDF)

Rawlings, B.*, Davis, H. E.*, Anum, A., Burger, O., Chen, L., Morales, J. C. C., Dutra, N., Dzabatou, A., Dzokoto, V., Erut, A., Fong, F. T. K., Ghelardi, S., Goldwater, M., Ingram, G., Messer, E., Kingsford, J., Lew-Levy, S., Mendez, K., Newhouse, M., … Legare, C. H. (2023). Quantifying quality: The impact of measures of school quality on children's academic achievement across diverse societies. Developmental Science, 00, e13434. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13434. *Joint first authors.

Evolution, Variation, and Ontogeny of Learning Laboratory

The Center for Applied Cognitive Science is affliated with Cristine Legare’s EVO Learn Lab, a team of cognitive developmental scientists who study the interplay of our universal mind and the variation of human culture.

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