Psychology Faculty

Sara Cordes

Professor

Department

Psychology

Profile

Sara Cordes' research is centered upon understanding how it is that infants, children, and adults keep track of quantity鈥攖hat is, how they attend to, represent, and process number, time, and amount (e.g. volume, surface area). This research is based upon the assumptions that humans, throughout the life-span, as well as non-human animals, learn about the world through tracking these quantities in their environment and that these representations of quantity also serve as the basis for later, verbal and symbolic representations of number (e.g., verbal counting). Research questions revolve around understanding exactly how infant representations of number and other quantities map to later mathematics competence and factors that may contribute to increased precision in representing quantity. In addition, other research investigates how numerical competence and fluency in early childhood affect decision making in probabilistic (gambling) tasks.