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Department of Developmental Psychology: Welcome!

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Developmental Psychology investigates age-related changes in behavior and experience that occur across the lifespan of an individual. Research examines different areas of development, e.g., cognitive, emotional, or social capabilities, and asks questions such as: At which age and how exactly do the changes occur? Which factors (e.g., in the individual or the environment) are the causes of developmental changes?

Recent research foci of our department include empirical studies on

  • (social-)cognitive development in early infancy (mainly understanding of other people’s actions, imitative learning, control of intentional action),
  • Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (neural correlates of cognitive development)
  • relations between cognitive abilities (mainly executive functions, theory of mind) and developmental problems in middle childhood,
  • development in adolescence and in emerging adulthood,
  • relations of learning and development.

Research methods include eye-tracking, EEG, and video-based behavioral analyses.

Projects

http://www.crossing-project.de/

Crossing-Projekt (DFG FOR 2253) (until 2024)

Crossing the borders: The interplay of language, cognition, and the brain in early human development

http://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/pier-studie

PIER-Project (DFG GRK 1668)

Intrapersonal developmental risk factors in childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal perspective

Laboratories

http://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/babylab/index.html

BabyLAB

Investigates the cognitive development of children from the age of 4 month onwards

Overview

Videostudio

Production of video based footage for psychological behavior analysis and stimulus presentation in experimental settings

Recent publications

Trouillet, L., Bothe, R., Mani, N., & Elsner, B. (2025). Goal saliency and verbal information influence the imitation of movements and goals in 20-to 22-month-old toddlers. Infant Behaviorand Development, 79, 102063. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102063

Vanoncini, M., Hoehl, S., Elsner, B., Wallot, S., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Kayhan, E. (2025). Individual differences in infants’ speech segmentation performance: The role of mother-infant cardiac synchrony. Infancy, 30:e70020. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.70020

Tünte, M. R., Hoehl, S., Wunderwald, M., Bullinger, J., Boyadziheva, A., Maister, L., Elsner, B., Tsakiris, M., & Kayhan, E. (2025) Respiratory and cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in the first two years of life. eLife, 12, RP91579. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.91579.4

Brandt, A., Gericke, C., Bondü, R., & Elsner, B. (2025). Stability and change of cool and hot executive functions across middle childhood and early adolescence: A person-oriented longitudinal perspective. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001980

Rauers, A., Knitter, L. A., Studtmann, M., & Riediger, M. (2025). Tearjerkers may leave some eyes dry – Emotional reactivity to film clips from adolescence to old age. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, https://doi.org/doi:10.1111/bjdp.70002

Kliesch, C. (2025). Postnatal dependency as the foundation of social learning in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 292:20242818. http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2818

Vanoncini, M., Kayhan, E., Elsner, B., Wunderwald, M., Wallot, S., Hoehl, S., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Individual differences in infants' speech segmentation performance: The role of mother-infant cardiac synchrony. Infancy. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.70020