Research Interests Dr. Heyman's research focuses on children's thinking about people. She studies the development of children's folk beliefs about the self and others from a range of research perspectives, including social development, cognitive development, and anthropology. She is interested in the causes and consequences of children's beliefs about people, and their implications for achievement motivation and self-understanding. Dr. Heyman's research also examines the types of inferences children make when they are learning new information about people, and how these inferences compare to those made about non-human entities. Young children's vulnerability to self-blame and helplessness Relationship to beliefs about goodness.
Young children use motive information to make trait inferences.