Professor Michael Siegal

Teaching and administrative duties

I am Director of Postgraduate Studies and on the Pure Sci Graduate Research Committee and WUN Initiative. In addition, I am part of the Psychology Management Group, Psychology Teaching Committee and chair the Postgraduate Studies Committee.

Research Interests

My early interests were in researching family and cultural influences on children´s social cognition and moral understanding. Later I became involved in a series of investigations on how children interpret questions in experiments in areas such as number and theory of mind.

From these studies, I have developed an enduring interest in the development of conversational pragmatics and how conversational understanding relates to children´s conceptual knowledge in biology and cosmology as well as number and `theory of mind´ reasoning.

In recent years, this work has extended to research on the relation between language and cognition involving studies of atypically developing children such as deaf children, as well as adults with agrammatical aphasia or with right hemisphere lesions that result in an impaired ability to follow inferences in conversation.

There are two objectives that unify my research. The first is to find the true depth and potential of children's cognitive development in different cultures. The second is to determine how access to language, language acquisition, and participation in conversation influence cognitive processes in development and their breakdown in adulthood following brain damage.

In carrying out these studies, I derive immense satisfaction in the success of my collaborators and students.

Grants

European Union Sixth Framework Marie Curie Chair research program at the Universities of Trieste and Sheffield M. Siegal (PI): "Project ALACODE: Access to language and cognitive development." (2006-2009). € 447,798

"Project ALACODE" co-funding (Trieste sources including €40,000 from Fondazione Benefica Kathleen Foreman-Casali) M. Siegal (PI), (2006-2009). € 150,000

British Academy Ayumi Matsuo(PI) & M. Siegal: "Bilingualism, conversational understanding and cognitive development." (2006-2007). £7500

Italian Ministry of Education Postgraduate Collaborative Research Awards Luca Surian (PI) & M Siegal: "Cognitive development in atypically developing children." (2004-2006). € 36,000

Leverhulme Trust M Siegal (PI) & O Pascalis: "Understanding of mind, faces and emotion in deaf and hearing children." (2001-2004). £81,266

Nuffield Foundation Social Science New Career Development Fellowship Scheme S. Want (Fellow) & M. Siegal (Senior Partner): "Social cognition in deaf and hearing children" (2000-2003). £99,730

Activities and Distinctions

• Recipient of an EU Marie Curie Chair award (2006-2009)
• Editorial Boards: Developmental Psychology (1992, 1999-2004), Developmental Science (2000- date), Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (1989-2002), Social Development (2000- date), Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2004-2006)
• I am an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology (1996 - date) and co-edited the Language and Conceptual Development Series in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2004-2005)
• I participated in the “Innateness and the structure of the mind” (2001-2004) that was supported by a £310,659 AHRB grant to S. Laurence (Philosophy, Sheffield) for which I was a co-applicant.
• My ex-PhD student, Tyron Woolfe, won the 2002 BPS Neil O'Connor Award in recognition of outstanding research in the field of developmental disability by a young investigator.
• My research has received coverage in the print and electronic media and in 2005 was the subject a documentary on cognitive developmental research produced by NHK Educational Television in Japan.
• My work in progress includes contributions to the Handbook of Language Development (Blackwell), Handbook of Applied Linguistics (Mouton de Gruyter), and Handbook of the Neuroscience of Language (Elsevier Science). I am in the processing of writing a book The Challenge of Discovering What Children Know (OUP).

Invited speaker

• Conference on Conversational Pragmatics (Toulouse, June, 2006)
• Conference on Conceptual and Linguistic Development (Reims, France, 2005)
• Conference on Deaf and Hearing People: Language and Culture in Denmark, (Copenhagen, November, 2005)
• International Symposium on Molecular Genetics and Higher Cognitive Functioning, Heron Island, Australia, February, 2004)
• ), Conference on Brain Mechanisms of Thinking, International Institute for Advanced Studies (Kyoto, Japan, January, 2003)
• XXVIIIème Symposium de L'Association de Psychologie Scientifique de Langue Française (Rouen, France, July, 2002)

Key Publications

YAZDI, A. A., GERMAN, T.P., DEFEYER, M., and SIEGAL, M. (in press).
Competence and contributions to performance in belief-desire reasoning: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about false belief?
Cognition.

VARLEY, R., KLESSINGER, N., ROMANOWSKI, C.A.J., and SIEGAL, M. (2005).
Agrammatic but numerate.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 3519-3524
[Cover article - Commentary: PNAS, 102, 3177-3178 (2005); Nature Reviews Neuroscience,6, 262 (2005), New Scientistt, 2487,18 (2005), Science,307, 1197 (2005); Scientific American, 292 (6),19-21 (2005)].

HEJMADI, A., ROZIN, P., and SIEGAL, M. (2004).
Once in contact, always in contact: Conceptions of essence and purification in Hindu Indian and American children.
Developmental Psychology, 40, 467-476.

SIEGAL, M., and SURIAN, L. (2004).
Conceptual development and conversational understanding.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 534-538.

SIEGAL, M., and VARLEY, R. (2002).
Neural systems involved in `theory of mind´.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 463-471

WOOLFE, T., WANT, S. C., and SIEGAL, M. (2002).
Signposts to development: Theory of mind in deaf children.
Child Development, 73, 768-778

SIEGAL, M., VARLEY, R., and WANT, S. C. (2001).
Mind over grammar: Reasoning in aphasia and development.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 296-301.

View an expanded list of Michael Siegal's publications.

Postgraduate Students

• Sophia Dimopoulou
• Clair Pond