My research focuses on how children acquire knowledge from other people.  Currently, this question takes two directions: First, I am interested in the social factors that influence their learning about the world and second, I study how children develop a pragmatic understanding of language.

(a) How do infants and young children understand and exploit the distinctive characteristics of other people as sources of information? How do children balance the potential benefit of learning and the risk of being misinformed? When do infants appreciate the possibility that an utterance might be false? Do children and adults evaluate speakers differently? Our research addresses these questions through a range of projects. We are especially interested in how children identify candidate information sources, children’s selective trust, notions of reliability, source monitoring, and children’s understanding of expertise.

(b) How do we come to understand the internal significance of language? Meaning is connected to speaker-oriented notions like saying, asking, doubting, believing, supposing and so on. The relation between what sentences mean and the beliefs, questions and doubts that speakers express is complex and subtle. How do children learn about the many pragmatic functions of their language? Our research looks especially at children between the ages of 1-5 and uses multiple methodologies.

Selected Publications

1. Koenig, M. A., (in press).  Beyond Semantic Accuracy: Preschoolers Evaluate a Speaker's Reasons.  Child Development.

2. Koenig, M.A. & Woodward, A. L. (in press). Toddlers learn words in a foreign language: The role of native vocabulary knowledge.  Journal of Child Language.

3. Koenig, M. A., & Doebel, S. (in press).  Children’s Understanding of Unreliability: Evidence for a Negativity Bias. In S. Gelman & M. Banaji (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children and other species can teach us. Oxford University Press.

4. Ganea, P., Koenig, M. A., & Gordon-Millet, K., (2011).  Changing your mind about things unseen: Toddlers’ sensitivity to prior reliability.  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(4), 445-453.

5. Koenig, M. A., & Jaswal, V. K., (2011).  Characterizing children’s expectations about expertise and incompetence: Halo or pitchfork effects?   Child Development, 82, 1634-1647.

6. Koenig, M. A., & Woodward, A. L., (2010).  24-month-olds’ sensitivity to the prior inaccuracy of the source: Possible mechanisms.  Developmental Psychology, 46 (4), pp. 815–826.

7. Koenig, M.A., (2010).  Selective trust in testimony: Children’s evaluation of the message, the speaker and the speech act.  Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

8. Koenig, M. A. & Harris, P. L., (2008).  The basis of epistemic trust: Reliable testimony or reliable sources?  Episteme, (4), 264-284.

9. Koenig, M. A. & Woodward, A. L., (2007).  Word learning.  In G. Gaskell (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics.   Oxford University Press: Oxford.

10. Pasquini, E. S., Corriveau, K. H., Koenig, M. A.  & Harris, P. L., (2007).  Preschoolers monitor the relative accuracy of informants.  Developmental Psychology, 43(5), 1216-1226.