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About

Virginia Slaughter is a leading developmental psychologist whose research sits at the intersection of social cognition, imitation, and human-robot interaction. Her work fundamentally explores how infants and young children learn from and perceive both human and non-human agents. A key contribution is her systematic investigation of children’s ability to imitate robots, revealing that while toddlers and preschoolers do learn from robots, they often overimitate human demonstrators more than robotic ones—a finding with profound implications for the design of educational technology. Her influential eye-tracking study on infant perception of possible and impossible body movements (35 citations) has also advanced our understanding of early action perception. Across her most cited works, spanning from 2008 to 2023, Slaughter has consistently challenged the "video deficit" hypothesis, showing that in today’s technology-saturated environments, children can successfully imitate from screens and social robots. Her methodological innovations, including tools for analyzing children’s touch with robots, have paved the way for safer, more effective robotic teaching aids. With a career dedicated to mapping the early ontogeny of imitation, Slaughter’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in how children navigate an increasingly social and technological world.