Early Cognitive Development Unit
School of Psychology
University of Queensland
Brisbane, QLD 4072

B.A. (Sarah Lawrence College, New York)
Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley)
Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (University of Queensland)

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia; moved to Queensland in 1996. Australian and US citizenship.

Three children: Katie, 14; Rorie, 11; Brian, 4.

Associate editor: British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Australian Journal of Psychology

Editorial board member: Cognitive Development, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Open Behavioural Science Journal

Member of the following professional bodies: Australian Psychological Society, Society for Research in Child Development, Association for Psychological Science, Australasian Human Development Association, Behavioral and Brain Sciences Associate

I am also Vice President of the Fellowship Fund Incorporated, Branch of the Australian Federation of University Women, Queensland.  This organisation grants scholarships to  women pursuing postgraduate studies (see http://www.afuwqfellowships.com).

Research areas:

• Early development of human body representations
• Social cognition in infancy (imitation, joint attention)
• Theory of mind in infancy and early childhood
• Acquisition of biological concepts in preschoolers
• Number cognition in infants and toddlers

Current projects:

Charting the prevalence, time course and social-cognitive correlates of neonatal imitation (ARC Discovery Project)

Social Influences on five key steps in understanding mind for children with autism, deafness or typical development (ARC Discovery Project)

Synchronic imitation in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Apex Foundation Trust for Autism project)

How facial and vocal information affect infants' recognition of the human body

Discrimination of accurate from inaccurate counting by infants

Slaughter, V., Peterson, C., & Carpenter, M. (2008). Maternal talk about mental states and the emergence of joint visual attention. Infancy, 13, 640–659.

Lim, H., & Slaughter, V. (2008). Brief report: Human figure drawings in children with Asperger’s Syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 988–994

Slaughter, V., Nielsen, M., & Enchelmaier, P. (2008). Interacting socially with human hands at 24 months of age. Infancy, 13, 1-11.

Slaughter, V., & Griffiths, M. (2007). Death understanding and fear of death in young children. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 12, 525-535.

Slaughter, V., & Suddendorf, T. (2007). Participant loss due to fussiness in infant visual paradigms: a review of the last 20 years. Infant Behaviour and Development, 30, 505-514.

Slaughter, V., Peterson, C., & Mackintosh, E. (2007). Mind what mother says: Narrative input and theory of mind in typical children and those on the autism spectrum. Child Development, 78, 839-858.

Slaughter, V., & Corbett, D. (2007). Differential copying of human and non-human models at 12 and 18 months of age. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 31-35. Special Issue on Social Cognition During Infancy.

Slaughter, V., Kamppi, D., & Paynter, J. (2006). Toddler subtraction with large sets: Further evidence for an analog-magnitude representation of number. Developmental Science, 9, 33-39.

Peterson, C. & Slaughter, V. (2006). Telling the story of ToM: Deaf and hearing children's narratives and false belief understanding. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24, 151-179.

Slaughter, V., & Heron, M. (2004). Origins and Early Development of Human Body Knowledge. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial number 276, 69(2). This is a book; please email me for a hard copy.

Slaughter, V., Stone, V., & Reed, C. (2004). Perception of faces and bodies: Similar or different? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 219-223.

Repacholi, B., Slaughter, V., Pritchard, M., & Gibbs, V. (2003). Theory of mind, Machiavellianism and social functioning in childhood. In B. Repacholi & V. Slaughter (Eds.) Individual Differences in Theory of Mind: Implications for Typical and Atypical Development. Hove:Psychology Press.

Peterson, C., & Slaughter, V. (2003). Opening windows into the mind: Mothers' preferences for mental state explanations and children's theory of mind. Cognitive Development, 18, 399-429.

Slaughter, V., & Lyons, M. (2003) Learning about life and death in early childhood. Cognitive Psychology, 43, 1-30.

Slaughter, V., & McConnell, D. (2003). Emergence of joint attention: Relationships between gaze-following, social referencing, imitation and naming in infancy. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 164, 54-73.

Slaughter, V., Heron, M., & Sim, S. (2002) Development of preferences for the human body shape in infancy. Cognition, 85(3), B71-B81.

Slaughter, V., Dennis, M., & Pritchard, M. (2002) Theory of mind and peer acceptance in preschoolers. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20, 545-564.