Madison L. Pesowski,

Ph.D.​
I am interested in children's social cognitive development. My research investigates how children use objects' physical features and non obvious properties to make various social inferences and predictions. 

Currently, I am an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley. Before arriving at UFV, I was an NSERC-funded Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, San Diego.  

I received my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Waterloo.  
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
​ University of the Fraser Valley 
My other websites you might be interested in:

Google scholar

research
​gate

OSF
Some of my lines of research:
Object Preferences
Reasoning about actions with objects
  • ​​Pesowski, M.L., Ho, V., & Friedman, O. (in press). Varities of value: Children differentiate caring from liking. Cognitive Development. 
  • Pesowski, M.L., Kelemen, D., & Schachner, A. (2021). Children use artifacts to infer others' shared interests. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 500-506). 
  • Pesowski, M.L. & Friedman, O. (2019). Children value objects with distinctive histories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 2120-2128.​
  • Pesowski, M.L., Quy, A., Lee, M., & Schachner, A. (2020). Children use inverse planning to detect social transmission in design of artifacts. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 845-851). ​
  • Pesowski, M.L. & Friedman, O. (2018). Using versus liking: Young children use ownership to predict actions, but not to infer preferences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 169, 19-29.
  • Pesowski, M.L., Denison, S., & Friedman, O. (2016). Young children infer preferences from a single action, but not if it is constrained. Cognition, 155, 168-175.  ​​
Property & Emotions
  • Pesowski, M.L. & Friedman, O. (2016). Preschoolers use emotions to infer relations: The case of ownership. Cognitive Development, 40, 60-67. 
  • Pesowski, M.L. & Friedman. O. (2015). Preschoolers and toddlers use ownership to predict basic emotions. Emotion, 15, 104-108. 
Children's understanding of ownership
  • Pesowski, M.L., Kanngiesser, P., & Friedman, O. (2019). Give and take: Ownership affects how 2- and 3-year-olds allocate resources. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 185, 214-223. 
  • McEwan, S., Pesowski, M.L., & Friedman, O. (2016). Identical but not interchangeable: Preschoolers view owned objects as non-fungible. Cognition, 146, 16-21.