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B.A., Smith College, 1996
Ph.D., Cornell University 2003

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Research Interests

My research focuses on the development of language, communication, and social cognition. Current projects investigate social information gathering, statistical language learning, the representation of the social world, and how children’s abilities in these domains change with age. I am also interested in , the relations between language, culture, and cognition, and children's memory.

Selected Publications

Giardini, F., Fitneva, S.A., Tamm, A. (2019). "Someone told me": Preemptive reputation protection in communication. PLoS ONE, 14(4): e0200883.

Mangardich, H. & Fitneva, S. A. (2019). Gossip, reputation, and language. In F. Giardini, & R. Wittek (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fitneva, S. A. (2018). The acquisition of evidentiality. In A. Aikhenvald (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (pp. 185-201). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fitneva, S. A., & Christiansen, M. C. (2017). Developmental changes in cross-situational word learning: The inverse effect of initial accuracy. Cognitive Science, 41, 141–161. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12322

Fitneva, S.A., Pile Ho, E., & Hatayama, M. (2016). Japanese and Canadian children’s beliefs about child and adult knowledge: A case for developmental equifinality? PLoS ONE 11(9): e0163018. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163018

Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

Fitneva, S. A., & T. Matsui (2015). The emergence and development of language across cultures. In L. A. Jensen (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Published online October 2014. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199948550.013.8

Fitneva, S. A. (2014). Evidential markers. In P. Brooks, & V. Kempe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language development (pp. 204-206). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Fitneva, S. A., Lam, N. H. L., Dunfield, K. A. (2013). The development of children’s information gathering: To look or to ask? Developmental Psychology, 49, 533-542. DOI:10.1037/a0031326

Fitneva, S. A. (2012). Beyond answers: Questions and children’s learning. In J.P. de Ruiter (Ed.) Questions: formal, functional, and interactional perspectives, (pp. 165-178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fitneva, S. A., & Christiansen, M. H. (2011). Looking in the wrong direction correlates with better word learning. Cognitive Science, 35, 367-380.

Monaghan, P., Christiansen, M. C., & Fitneva, S. A. (2011). Arbitrariness of the sign: Learning advantages from the structure of the vocabulary. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(3), 325-347.

Ceci, S.J., Fitneva, S. A., & Williams, W. M. (2010). Representational constraints on the development of memory and metamemory: A developmental-representational synthesis. Psychological Review, 117, 464-495.

Fitneva, S. A. (2010). Children's representation of child and adult knowledge. Journal of Cognition and Development, 11, 458-484.

Fitneva, S. A., & Dunfield, K. A. (2010). Selective information seeking after a single encounter. Developmental Psychology, 46(5), 1380-1384.

Monaghan, P., Christiansen, M. C., Farmer, T. A., & Fitneva, S. A. (2010). Measures of phonological typicality: Robust coherence and psychological validity. The Mental Lexicon, 5, 281-299.

Fitneva, S. A. (2009). Evidentiality and trust: The role of informational goals. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 125, 49-61.

Fitneva, S. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Monaghan, P. (2009) From sound to syntax: phonological constraints on children's lexical categorization of new words. Journal of Child Language 36(5), 967-997.

Fitneva, S. A., & Song, Y. (2009). The comprehension of "left" and "right" in a referential communication task. In N.A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2687-2691). Cognitive Science Society.

Matsui, T., & Fitneva, S. A., (2009). How do we know what we know: evidentiality in cognitive development New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 125, 1-11.

Fitneva, S. A. (2008). Evidentiality in Bulgarian children's reliability judgments. Journal of Child Language 35(4), 845-868. (Download pdf)

Fitneva, S. A. & Spivey, M. J. (2004). Context and language processing: The effect of authorship. In J. Trueswell & M. Tanenhaus (Eds.), World Situated Language Use: Psycholinguistic, Linguistic and Computational Perspectives on Bridging the Product and Action Traditions, (pp. 317-327). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Spivey, M. J., Richardson, D. C., & Fitneva, S. A. (2004). Memory outside of the brain: oculomotor indexes to visual and linguistic Information. In J. Henderson and F. Ferreira (Eds.), The Interface of Language, Vision, and Action: Eye Movements and the Visual World (pp. 161-189). New York: Psychology Press.

Fitneva, S. A. (2001). Epistemic marking and reliability judgments: Evidence from Bulgarian. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(3), 401-420.