Jul. 2, 2014:  The Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College is hosting the 2014 Thomas H. Wright Lecture, which this year is titled Asking Questions and Trusting What You're Told and will be presented by Paul Harris on Monday, July 14, at 4:30 pm in the Donnelley Theatre of the Heimbold Visual Arts Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. An informal reception will follow the event.

Paul Harris is a developmental psychologist with an interest in the development of cognition, emotion, and imagination. After studying psychology at the universities of Sussex and Oxford, he taught at the University of Lancaster, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the London School of Economics. In 1980, he moved to Oxford, where he became professor of developmental psychology and Fellow of St. John's College.

In 2001, he began teaching at Harvard University, where he holds the Victor S. Thomas Professorship of Education. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

In 2006, he received a Guggenheim award. His book on children's understanding of emotion, Children and Emotion, was published in 1989, and his book on play and imagination, The Work of the Imagination, was published in 2000.

He currently studies how young children learn about history, science, and religion on the basis of what trusted informants tell them. His latest book, Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn from Others, which describes this research, was published by Harvard University Press in May of 2012. It received the Eleanor Maccoby Award from the American Psychological Association and the Book Award of the Cognitive Development Society.

The annual Thomas H. Wright Lecture, inaugurated in 1995, honors Thomas H. Wright's dedication to Sarah Lawrence College and his long service on the board of trustees. An endowment established by the Leon Lowenstein Foundation funds the lecture.

Pictured here:  Paul Harris, PhD, developmental psychologist.

Photo courtesy Judith Schwartzstein, Sarah Lawrence College