Social and Cognitive Diversity and Development in Context

Dr Devine’s research centres around understanding developmental diversity and change. People vary enormously in the extent to which they can regulate their own thoughts and actions (‘executive function’) and can tune in to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others (‘mind reading’ or ‘theory of mind’). His work examines whether differences in such fundamental cognitive and social skills are shaped by contexts and experience, and have consequences for people’s social lives, academic success, mental health and well-being.

Dr Devine’s research crosses different developmental periods (i.e., from infancy to adolescence and early adulthood), incorporates diverse populations, seeks to generate innovative measurement tools, adopts a range of research designs (i.e., longitudinal, cross-cultural, meta-analysis, interventions), and embraces cutting-edge statistical modeling to understand diversity and change.

Research Interests

• Social-Emotional Skills and Social-Cognitive Development

• Understanding others’ minds (‘theory of mind’ or ‘mindreading’).

• Regulating thoughts and actions (‘self-regulation’ or ‘executive function’).

• Contextual influences on child development (e.g., parents/caregivers, siblings, teachers, peers).

• Links between individual differences in social and cognitive abilities and social adjustment, academic achievement, neurodiversity, and mental health.

• Psychometric test design and development, longitudinal methods, structural equation modelling, machine learning and AI.