EducationB.A. (Windsor)
M.A. (Queen's)
Ph.D. (Queen's)
Research InterestsI am fascinated by representation and how thought develops and is influenced by interactions with others and with different cultural tools. This interest has resulted in two different streams of research. The first stream is an examination of how adults and children use external written symbols to affect cognitive processing. For my doctoral dissertation and SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, I examined children’s understanding and production of external symbols and their relationship to memory (Eskritt & Lee, 2002; Eskritt et al., 2001) and communication (Eskritt & Olson, 2001). For my dissertation I explored how 6- through 13-year-olds and adults invented notations to help themselves remember information and how these notations influenced memory strategy. During my post doc with David Olson, I investigated further not only how children and adults use external symbols to enhance memory, but also extended my research to how children use external symbols to communicate. I continued this line of research with a SSHRC grant, looking at the interaction between memory and external symbols (Eskritt & McLeod, 2008) as well as expanding my focus to also include problem-solving (Eskritt & Arthurs, 2006).
Another line of research deals with children’s developing ability to integrate nonverbal communication with verbal information where I have collaborated with Kang Lee now at the Institute for Child Study, University of Toronto (Eskritt & Lee, 2003; Freire, Eskritt, & Lee, 2004; Lee, Eskritt, Symons, & Muir, 1998). We first examined whether children could use various types of nonverbal cues (e.g., direction of eye gaze or pointing) to determine what another person wanted. We continued this line of research together and explored how children deal with messages where the verbal message is incongruent with the nonverbal message that a person communicates (Eskritt & Lee, 2003; Freire et al., 2004). We are presently engaged in data collection for a project that examines adults’ and children’s ability to produce and detect different types of lies and how this might be related to personality factors.
I have recently started a third line of research exploring how gender within conversation may influence speech (e.g., patterns of word use, content themes), following both hypothesis-based deductive and exploratory inductive methods of inquiry. I am also interested in whether this speech, in turn, may shape the social construction of gender through impacting others’ interpretation of speech. While much empirical research documents gender differences in conversational styles, less is known about how people talk to each other about women and men and thus dyadically construct gender. That is, how do people use language to “do gender”? I am collaborating on this project with Mary Delaney from the Departments of Psychology and Women’s Studies at MSVU.
Refereed Publications
Eskritt, M., & Lee, K. (2009).Children’s informational reliance during inconsistent communication: The public-private distinction. Journal
of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 214-228. Click here to read this article
Eskritt, M., Whalen, J., & Lee, K. (2008). Young children’s recognize violations of the Gricean maxims. British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, 26(3), 435-443. Click here to read this article
Eskritt, M., & McLeod, K. (2008). Children’s note-taking as a mnemonic tool. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 101,52-74.
Click here to read this article
Eskritt, M. & Lee, K. (2007).Preschoolers’ use of eye gaze for ‘mind-reading’. In R. Flom, K. Lee, & D. Muir (Eds.), Gaze following: Its
development and significance. Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum.
Eskritt, M., & Lee, K. (2007). The impact of notation on cognition and its development: Theoretical perspectives & empirical evidence.
In E. Teubal, J. Dockrell, & L. Tolchinsky (Eds.), Notational knowledge:Developmental and historical perspectives. Sense
Publishers.
Eskritt, M., & Arthurs, C. (2006). Analytical reasoning: Does the use of notations improve performance? Canadian Journal of Education,
29, 855-872.
Eskritt, M. (2004). Children’s and adult’s use of notation and its influence on memory strategies. In S. P. Shohov (Ed.), Advances in
psychology research (Vol. 34). Nova Sciences.
Freire, A., Eskritt, M., & Lee, K. (2004). Are eyes windows to a deceiver’s soul? Children’s use of another’s eye gaze cues in a deceptive
situation, Developmental Psychology, 40, 1093-1104. Click here to read this article
Eskritt, M. & Lee, K. (2003). Do actions speak louder than words? Preschool children’s use of the verbal-nonverbal consistency principle
during inconsistent social communications. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27, 25-41.
Eskritt, M., & Lee, K. (2002). "Remember where you last saw that card": Children's production of external symbols as a memory aid.
Developmental Psychology, 38, 254-266.
Eskritt, M., Lee, K., & Donald, M. (2001). The influence of symbolic literacy on memory: Testing Plato's hypothesis. Canadian
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55, 39-50.
Lee, K., & Eskritt, M. (1999). Beyond the Gricean maxims: Conversational awareness as a multifaceted domain of knowledge.
Commentary on M. Siegal’s, Not merely methodology: The significance of conversational awareness in cognitive development.
Developmental Science, 2, 27-28.
Eskritt, M., Donald, M., & Muir, D. W. (1998). Delayed imitation of complex behavioral sequences by 14- to 16-month-olds.
Early
Development and Parenting, 7, 171-180.
Lee, K., Eskritt, M., Symons, L., & Muir, D. (1998). Children's use of triadic eye gaze information for 'mind reading'.
Developmental
Psychology, 34, 525-539.