Deon T. Benton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology & Human Development
VKC Member
Overview of Interests
Dr Benton's research program is focused on how — or through what cognitive mechanisms of change — infants and young children learn to reason about cause and effect as well as how these groups learn to distinguish between prosocial (i.e., "good") and antisocial (i.e., "bad") individuals. He investigates these questions through behavioral experiments and computational modeling. The computational models enable Dr. Benton to implement theories of how change happens and see the consequences of those assumptions as the model runs. He then tests the predictions of these models in experiments with infants and children. More broadly, by understanding what mechanisms of change give rise to these capacities in typically developing children, it is possible to intervene on some aspect of that mechanism to improve developmental outcomes and learning in atypical populations.