Paul Harris is interested in the early development of cognition, emotion, and imagination. His most recent book, Trusting What You're Told: How Children Learn from Others, will be published by Harvard University Press in May 2012. This book discusses how far children rely on their own firsthand observation or alternatively trust what other people tell them — especially when they confront a domain of knowledge in which firsthand observation is difficult. For example, many aspects of history, science, and religion concern events that children cannot easily observe for themselves. How far do children believe what they are told about these domains? When and how do they become aware of the conflicting claims made by science as compared with religion?

Degrees

• Ph.D., Oxford University

• Harris, P.L. (2007). Hard work for the imagination. In A. Gönçü & S. Haskins (Eds.). Play and Development: Evolutionary, Sociocultural and Functional Perspectives. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (2007)
• Harris, P.L. (2007). Trust. Developmental Science, 10, 135-138. (2007)
• Pasquini, E.S., Corriveau, K., Koenig, M., & Harris, P.L. (2007). Preschoolers monitor the relative accuracy of informants. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1216-12. (2007)
• Pons, F., de Rosnay, M. Doudin, P-A., Harris, P.L. & De Stasio, S. (2007). Comprensione sociale ed emotiva nei bambini. In M. Pinelli & C. Trubini (Eds.). Metcognizione, Emozioni e Teoria della Mente. Parma, Italy: Uni.Nova. (2007)
• Harris, P. L. & Astuti, R. (2006). Learning that there is life after death. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 475-476. (2006)
• Harris, P. L. & Duke, Suzanne (2006). Understanding the flow of thoughts and feelings. In M. Schleifer, C. Martiny (Eds.). Talking to children about responsibility and control of emotions. Calgary, AB, Canada: Detselig Enterprises, pp. 95-117. (2006)
• Harris, P.L. & Koenig, M. (2006). Trust in testimony: How children learn about science and religion. Child Development, 77, 505-524. (2006)
• Harris, P.L. (2006). Commentary: Use your words. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24, 253-261. (2006)
• Harris, P.L. (2006). It’s probably good to talk. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 52, 158-164. (2006)
• Harris, P.L. (2006). Social cognition. In W. Damon, R. Lerner, D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (Eds.). Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 2: Cognition, Perception and Language, 6th edition, pp. 811-858. New York: John Wiley. (2006)
• Harris, P.L., Pasquini, E.S., Duke, S., Asscher, J.J. & Pons, F. (2006). Germs and angels: The role of testimony in young children’s ontology. Developmental Science, 9, 76-96. (2006)
• Pons, F. de Rosnay, M., Doudin, P-A, Harris, P.L. & Cuisinier, F. (2006). Emotion understanding as a reflective emotional competence: Between experiences and symbols. In F. Pons, M-F. Daniel, L. Lafortune, P-A. Doudin & O. Albanese (2006). Toward Emotional Competences. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. (2006)
• Pons, F., Doudin, P.-A., Harris, P.L., & de Rosnay, M. (2006). Helping children to improve their emotion comprehension. In F. Pons, D. Hancock, L. Lafortune & P.-A. Doudin (Eds.), Emotions in learning. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. (2006)
• Pons, F., Harris, P.L. & de Rosnay, M. (2006). Betydningen af barnets sprog og familiens samtaleaktiviteter for barnets Theory of Mind. In C. Jantzen & T. Thellefsen (Eds.) . Videnskabelig BegrebsdannelseU. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. (2006)
• Richert, R. A., & Harris, P. L. (2006). The ghost in my body: Children’s developing concept of the soul. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 6, 409-427. (2006)
• Corriveau, K., Pasquini, E.S., & Harris, P.L. (2005). “If it’s in your mind, it’s in your knowledge”: Children’s developing anatomy of identity. Cognitive Development, 20, 321-340. (2005)
• Dias, M., Roazzi, A. & Harris, P.L. (2005). Reasoning from unfamiliar premises: A study with unschooled adults. Psychological Science, 16, 550-554. (2005)
• Dias, M.G., Roazzi, A., O’Brien, P. & Harris, P.L. (2005). Logical reasoning and fantasy contexts: Eliminating differences between children with and without experience in school. Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 39, 13-22. (2005)
• Giménez-Dasí, M, Guerrero, S. & Harris, P.L. (2005). Intimations of immortality and omniscience in early childhood. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2, 285-297. (2005)
• Harris, P.L. & Giménez, M. (2005). Children’s acceptance of conflicting testimony: The case of death. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 143-164. (2005)
• Harris, P.L. & Want, S. (2005). On learning what not to do: The emergence of selective imitation in tool use by young children. In S. Hurley & N. Chater (Eds.) Perspectives on Imitation: From Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science, Volume 2, pp. 149-162. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (2005)
• Harris, P.L. (2005). Conversation, pretence, and theory of mind. In J.W. Astington and J. Baird (Eds.). Why language matters for theory of mind. New York: Oxford University Press. (2005)
• Harris, P.L. (2005). Grasping action. In S. Hurley & N. Chater (Eds.) Perspectives on Imitation: From Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science, Volume 2, pp 173-178. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (2005)
• Harris, P.L., de Rosnay, M. & Pons, F. (2005). Language and children’s understanding of mental states. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 69-73. (2005)
• Houston-Price, C., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P.L. (2005). ‘Word learning wizardry’ at 1;6. Journal of Child Language, 32, 175-189 (2005)
• Koenig, M. & Harris, P.L. (2005). Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development, 76, 1261-1277. (2005)
• Koenig, M. & Harris, P.L. (2005). The role of social cognition in early trust. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 457-459. (2005)
• Pons, F. & Harris, P.L. (2005). Longitudinal change and longitudinal stability of individual differences in children's emotion understanding. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 1158-1174. (2005)
• Pons, F., Doudin, P.-A., Harris, P.L., & de Rosnay (2005). La compréhension des émotions (Understanding emotions). In L. Lafortune, M.-F. Daniel, P.-A. Doudin, F. Pons & O. Albanese (Eds.), Pédagogie et psychologie des émotions, pp. 183-206. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec. (2005)
• Clément, F., Koenig, M., & Harris, P.L. (2004). The ontogenesis of trust in testimony. Mind and Language, 19, 360-379. (2004)
• De Rosnay, M., Pons, F., Harris, P.L., & Morrell, J.M.B. (2004). A lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution in young children: relationships with linguistic ability and mothers’ mental state language. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22, 197-218. (2004)
• Harris, P.L. (2004). Pretending to be someone else. In L.A. Leavitt & D.M.B. Hall (Eds.), Social and moral development: Emerging evidence on the toddler years, pp. 185-199. Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute. (2004)
• Koenig, M., Clément, F. & Harris, P.L. (2004). Trust in Testimony: Children's use of true and false statements. Psychological Science, 10, 694-698. (2004)
• Meints, K., Plunkett, K., Harris, P.L. & Dimmock, D. (2004). The cow on the high street: effects of background context on early naming. Cognitive Development, 19, 275-290. (2004)
• Pons, F., Doudin, P.-A., & Harris, P.L. (2004). La compréhension des émotions: développement, différences individuelles, causes et interventions (Understanding emotion: development, individual differences, causes and interventions). In L. Lafortune, P.-A. Doudin, F. Pons & D. R. Hancock (Eds.), Les émotions à l’école (pp. 6-31). Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec. (2004)
• Pons, F., Doudin, P.-A., Martin, D., Lafortune, L., & Harris, P.L. (2004). Psychogenèse de la conscience et pensée réflexive. In R. Pallascio, M.-F. Daniel & L. Lafortune (Eds.), Pensée et réflexivité, pp. 13-36. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l'Université du Québec. (2004)
• Pons, F., Harris, P.L. & de Rosnay, M. (2004). Emotion comprehension between 3 and 11 years: Developmental periods and hierarchical organization. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1, 127-152. (2004)
• Tenenbaum, H. R., Visscher,P., Pons,F. & Harris, P.L. (2004). Emotional understanding in Quechua children from an agro-pastoralist village. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 28, 471-478. (2004)
• Harris, P.L. & Pons, F. (2003). Perspectives actuelles sur le développement de la compréhension des émotions chez l’enfant. (Contemporary perspectives on the development of children’s understanding of emotion). In J-M Colletta & A. Tcherkassof (Eds.) Les émotions: Cognition, Langage et développement, pp. 209-228. Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga. (2003)
• Harris, P.L. (2003). Les dieux, les ancêtres et les enfants (Gods, ancestors and children). Terrain, 40, 81-98. (2003)
• Pons, F., Lawson, J. Harris, P.L. & de Rosnay, M. (2003). Individual differences in children’s emotion understanding: Effects of age and language. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 44, 347-353. (2003)
• De Rosnay, M. & Harris, P.L. (2002). Individual differences in children’s understanding of emotion: The role of attachment. Attachment and Human Development, 4, 39-54. (2002)
• Giménez, M. & Harris, P.L. (2002). Understanding constraints on inheritance: Evidence for biological thinking in early childhood. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20, 307-324. (2002)
• Harris, P.L. (2002). Checking our sources: the origins of trust in testimony. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 33, 315-333. (2002)
• Harris, P.L. (2002). Penser à ce qui aurait pu se produire. (Thinking about what could have happened). Enfance, 54, 223-239. (2002)
• Harris, P.L. (2002). What do children learn from testimony? In P. Carruthers, S. P. Stich & M. Siegal (Eds.). The cognitive basis of science, (pp. 316-334). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2002)
• Meints, K, Plunkett, K., Harris, P.L. & Dimmock, D. (2002). What is ‘on’ and ‘under’ for 15-, 18- and 24-month-olds? Typicality effects in early comprehension of spatial prepositions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20, 113-130. (2002)
• Pons, F., Doudin, P.-A., Harris, P.L., & de Rosnay, M. (2002). Métaémotion et intégration scolaire. In L. Lafortune & P. Mongeau (Eds.), L'affectivité dans l'apprentissage (pp. 7-28). Sainte-Foy: Presses de l'Université du Québec. (2002)
• Pons, F., Harris, P.L., & Doudin, P-A. (2002). Teaching emotion understanding. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 17, 293-304. (2002)
• Want, S.C. & Harris, P.L. (2002). Compounding some problems and dissolving others. Developmental Science, 5, 39-41. (2002)
• Want, S.C. & Harris, P.L. (2002). How do children ape? Applying concepts from the study of non-human primates to the developmental study of ‘imitation’ in children. Developmental Science, 5, 1-13. (2002)
• Figueras-Costa, B. & Harris, P.L. (2001). Theory of mind in deaf children: A non-verbal test of false belief understanding. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 6:2, 92-102. (2001)
• Harris, P.L. (2001). The veridicality assumption. Mind and Language, 16, 247-262. (2001)
• Harris, P.L. (2001). Thinking about the unknown. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 494-498. (2001)
• Harris, P.L., Núñez, M. & Brett, C. (2001). Let’s swap: Early understanding of social exchange by British and Nepali children. Memory and Cognition, 29, 757-764. (2001)
• Pons, F. & Harris, P.L. (2001). Piaget’s conception of the development of consciousness: An examination of two hypotheses. Human Development, 44, 220-227. (2001)
• Want, S. C. & Harris, P.L. (2001). Learning from other people’s mistakes: Causal understanding in learning to use a tool. Child Development, 72, 431-443. (2001)
• Harris, P. L. (2000). On not falling down to earth: Children’s metaphysical questions. In R. Rosengren, C. Johnson & P.L. Harris (Eds.). Imagining the impossible: Magical, scientific, and religious thinking in children. New York: Cambridge University Press. (2000)
• Harris, P.L. & Leevers, H. (2000). Pretending, imagery and self-awareness in autism. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg & D. Cohen (Eds.). Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism and cognitive neuroscience (2nd edition), pp.182-202. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2000)
• Harris, P.L. (2000). The work of the imagination. Oxford: Blackwell (2000)
• Harris, P.L. (2000). Understanding emotion. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland-Jones (Eds.). Handbook of emotions (2nd edition). New York: Guildford Press. (2000)
• Harris, P.L., & Leevers, H.J. (2000). Reasoning from false premises. In P. Mitchell & K. Riggs (Eds.), Children’s reasoning and the mind (pp. 67-86). Hove, U.K.: Psychology Press. (2000)
• Leevers, H. & Harris, P.L. (2000). Counterfactual syllogistic reasoning in normal 4-year-olds, children with learning disabilities, and children with autism. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 76, 64-87. (2000)
• Pons, F., Harris, P.L. & de Rosnay, M. (2000). La compréhension des émotions chez l’enfant. Psychoscope, 9, 30-32. (2000)
• Rall, J. & Harris, P.L. (2000). In Cinderella’s slippers? Story comprehension from the protagonist’s point-of-view. Developmental Psychology, 36, 202-208. (2000)
• Rosengren, K, Johnson, C. & Harris, P.L. (2000). (Eds.). Imagining the impossible: Magical, scientific, and religious thinking in children. New York: Cambridge University Press (2000)
• Harris, P.L. (1999). Acquiring the art of conversation: Children’s developing conception of their conversation partner. In M. Bennett (Ed.) Developmental Psychology: Achievements and prospects. London: Psychology Press. (1999)
• Harris, P.L. (1999). Individual differences in understanding emotion: the role of attachment status and psychological discourse. Attachment and Human Development, 1, 307-324. (1999)
• Kavanaugh, R.D. & Harris, P.L. (1999). Pretense and counterfactual thought in young children. In L. Balter & C.S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Child psychology: A handbook of contemporary issues (pp. 158-176). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. (1999)
• Leevers, H. & Harris, P.L. (1999). Persisting effects of instruction on young children’s syllogistic reasoning. Thinking and Reasoning, 5, 145-173. (1999)
• Mareschal, D., Harris, P.L. & Plunkett, K. (1999). A computational and neuropsychological account of object-oriented behaviours in infancy. Developmental Science, 2, 306-317. (1999)
• Meerum Terwogt, M., Rieffe, C. Tuijn, A.H., Harris, P.L. & Mant, I. (1999). Children’s spontaneous correction of false beliefs in a conversation partner. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 23, 113-124. (1999)
• Meints, K., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P.L. (1999). When does an ostrich become a bird? The role of typicality in early word comprehension. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1072-1078. (1999)
• Polak, A. & Harris, P.L. (1999). Deception by young children following noncompliance. Developmental Psychology, 35, 561-568. (1999)
• Schafer, G., Plunkett, K. & Harris, P.L. (1999). What’s in a name? Lexical knowledge drives infants’ visual preferences in the absence of referential input. Developmental Science, 2, 187-194. (1999)
• Harris, P.L. (1998). Feeling happy, feeling sad: How young children talk about and hide emotion. Karger Gazette, No. 62, 1-3 (1998)
• Harris, P.L. (1998). Fictional absorption: emotional responses to make-believe. In S. Bråten (Ed.) Intersubjective communication and emotion in early ontogeny, pp. 336-353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (1998)
• Harris, P.L. (1998). Mimesis, imagination and role-play. In C. Renfrew and C. Scarre (Eds.) Cognition and material culture: The archaeology of symbolic storage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. (1998)
• Leevers, H. & Harris, P.L. (1998). Drawing impossible entities: A measure of the imagination in children with autism, children with learning difficulties, and normal four-year-old children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39, 399-410. (1998)
• Núñez, M. & Harris, P.L. (1998). Psychological and deontic concepts: Separate domains or intimate connection? Mind and Language, 13, 153-170. (1998)

• Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Gugenheim Memorial Foundation (2005)
• Emeritus Fellow, St John's College (Oxford) (2001)
• Research Readership, British Academy (2000)
• Elected Fellow, British Academy (1998)
• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1992)

• Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Max-Planck-Institut fur evolutionare Anthropologie (Leipzig) (2001-2006)
• Editorial Board, Child Development (2000-2001)
• Editorial Board, Human Development (1995-2001)
• Editor, British Journal of Developmental Psychology (1994-1997)

• DIP: Collaborative Research: Social Robots as Mechanisms for Language Instruction, Interaction, and Evaluation in Pre-School Children, National Science Foundation, (2011-2016)
  This is a collaborative proposal involving three PIs: Paul Harris (Professor of Education, HGSE), Cythia Breazal (Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences MIT) and David DeSteno (Associate Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University). Recent developments in robotics at MIT (and elsewhere) make it possible to present young children with robots that respond in a quasi-human, contingent fashion to them. To the extent that young children willingly engage with such robots, treating them as responsive interlocutors and informants, it is feasible to ask whether children will be willing to learn from them. The current proposal is deigned to answer this basic question. The work will involve three Phases. In Phase 1, iterative changes to the robot's non-verbal repertoire will be made so as to identify those characteristics that make the robbot attractive and worthy of sustained interaction by young children. In Phase 2, we will ask how well the ‘winning’ robot in Phase 1 compares with a human speaker as a source for the rapid learning of new vocabulary. In Phase 3, we will extend this comparison by asking whether the ‘winning robot’ is as effective as a human speaker in signaling the meaning of new vocabulary items via (i) non-verbal indices of attention to a given object and (ii) non-verbal indices of goal satisfaction. In Phase 4, we will ask whether the results obtained in Phase 3 can be replicated when the robot operator uses web-based connections, to communicate through a robot that interacts with the child when they both are in an environment (e.g. the child’s home or another preschool) that is remote from the operator. Finally, in Phase 5, we will examine the impact of variations in the robot’s verbal repertoire that are likely to make it more or less trusted as an informant by children from particular language backgrounds. The role of Paul Harris will be to help to design, analyze and write-up the experiments connected with each phase of the project. Children aged 3-4 years will be included in each phase.
• Creating Communities of Learners for Informal Cognitive Science Education, National Science Foundation, (2011-2016)
  The principal investigator, Paul Harris, will be supervising the participation of an HGSE doctoral student in the project Creating Communities of Learners for Informal Cognitive Science Education. Hitherto, several of my doctoral students have been given permission to recruit and test children at the Museum of Science. The Museum has hosted students from several institutions in this fashion. They now seek funding from NSF to support a stable cohort of such students whose duties will involve the training of a new generation of graduate researchers to work in the museum; the presentation of information on ongoing research to museum educators and interested parents; the tracking of participation by children and families in such research initiatives. The PI’s role will be to identify a suitable graduate student from among my doctoral advisees for this role and to serve a continuing role as advisor to that student, especially in connection with research projects conducted at the museum. Dr. Harris will serve on an as needed basis and will not need compensation for his work.
• Ritual, community and conflict, United Kingdom ESRC , (2011-2016)
  Paul Harris will collaborate with two other co-investigators, Professor Harvey Whitehouse, an anthropologist at Oxford University and Professor Cristine Legare a developmental psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin to investigate children’s understanding of, and participation in, ritualistic behavior. Following up recent findings on the development of imitation in early childhood, we will examine the cues that children use to selectively imitate (i.e. copy or mimic the entire act) versus emulate (i.e. reproduce the effect or perceived intention) ritualized action sequences. We will also examine the underlying cognitive prerequisites and learning processes that can lead children to regard a ritual as mandatory and unchangeable. Paul Harris will contribute in three ways to the project. First, as a developmental psychologist with a long experience of experimental work, he will collaborate in the design of experiments with young children that aim to analyze how they interpret and reproduce ritualized behaviors both those that they are already familiar with as well as novel rituals. Second, he will collaborate in the analysis and publication of those experiments in scholarly journals. Third, in the final period of the project, he will serve as a co-author (with Professors Whitehouse and Legare) of a book that reviews the key empirical findings from the project and assesses their implications. The book will be aimed at an interdisciplinary audience of anthropologists, psychologists and political scientists. For more information please see the Ritual, Community and Conflict Project - Project Overview. PROJECT WEBSITE

• AH-103   Educational Outcomes in Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Spring 2013)
• H-180   Cognitive Development and Trust in Testimony (Spring 2013)
• H-250   Developmental Psychology (Fall 2012)

• Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

• Child Development
• Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
• Language Development
• Psychology

The 2012 Founder's Lecture on Imagination and Testimony: Trusting What You’re Told at St. Johns College, Oxford

Mindshapes: Bringing Learning to Life through Apps and Play, describes how Professor Paul Harris advises the interactive learning company Mindshapes on incorporating educational principles into the development of websites and apps for young children

Professor Paul Harris Wins Preyer Award

Harris Elected to the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences

Building and Understanding the Emotional World of Children, an interview with Paul Harris about his research dealing with ways in which children use their imagination

Who Needs Imagination? - An interview with Paul Harris about the use of imagination in everyday life.