Gedeon Deák is a Cognitive Scientist and Developmental Psychologist (PhD, University of Minnesota, 1995) who has been in the department of Cognitive Science and the Human Development Program at UCSD since 1999. His interests include the following:

• How do young children solve problems and control their attention and thinking, especially using instructions and other social cues from adults?  In particular, how does the ability to "shift gears" to solve different kinds of problems, or understand different kinds of messges, develop from 3 to 6 years of age? How do underlying brain processes change to support this development?
• How do infants learn new social skills for communicating with adults, especially before they can use language?  How do patterns of social interactions and social information change from 2 to 24 months of age? How do infants "pick up on" behavior patterns of adults, and use these to predict their future behaviors? How is this learning disrupted in developmental disorders such as autism? Finally, how do these pre-verbal social skills "play forward" into early language development?
• Are children particularly good at learning words?  Does word learning differ from other kinds of learning?  How do children develop the ability to flexibly select words and descriptions to focus a listener's attention on particular topics of interest, and, conversely, how do children learn different words or phrases for related topics?

Dr. Deák can comment on questions about children's thinking and cognitive development; children's learning and early education; language development; infant social interaction and learning; and related topics. He has published peer-reviewed papers in all of these areas.