If you are interested in applying to graduate school at the University of Waterloo to work with Dr. O'Neill or Dr. Aguiar, please feel free to contact either of us by phone, email, or letter. Our application process is competitive and we each will generally admit only one student per year. The Developmental Psychology Program at the University of Waterloo is primarily a scholarly, research focused program, and provides opportunities for individual and collaborative research in diverse areas of both cognitive and social development. Students work closely with their primary advisor, but are also encouraged to work with other faculty members to gain experience in different domains of study and research methods. Faculty and students associated with the program are currently conducting research with infants, toddlers, preschool and school age children, and adolescents.
Research is conducted in laboratory and field settings.
Our commitment to research has led us to host the Biennial Waterloo Conference for Child Development over the past two decades, providing graduate students across Canada with a forum in which to present research and exchange ideas. My research interest is in infant cognition. I am interested in investigating issues related to how infants learn to make sense of the physical world, and to act upon objects appropriately and effectively. I am currently examining infants' perseverative errors in a variety of tasks and developing a problem-solving account for these errors. My collaborators and I have developed the construct of child-orientation as a possible self in young adults, and have established the psychometric reliability and validity of our Child Oriented Scale.