Ellen Markman is IBM Provostial Professor of

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. She specializes in word learning and

language development Language development in humans is a process which starts early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning b ...

in children, focusing specifically on how children come to associate words with their meanings. Markman contends that in order to learn the meaning of a word, children make use of three basic principles: the whole object assumption (words refer to an object rather than to its parts or features), the taxonomic assumption (labels should be extended to an object of the same kind rather than an object that is thematically related), and the mutual exclusivity assumption (another label can be used to refer to a feature or part of an object). Related topics that Markman has studied include

categorization Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identi ...

and

inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning refers to a variety of method of reasoning, methods of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument is supported not with deductive certainty, but with some degree of probability. Unlike Deductive reasoning, ''deductive'' ...

in children and infants. Markman subscribes to the innatist school of developmental psychologists, which asserts that children possess innate knowledge that they draw upon in the process of

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and s ...

. Her contribution to cognitive and developmental psychology has had significant impact in the field and has been recognized by awards such as the American Psychological Society's William James Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Basic Research and the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

’s Division 7 Outstanding Mentoring Award. She was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 2003 and the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2011.

Education and career

Markman received a Ph.D. from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

in 1973. She has been employed as a tenure-track faculty member in the Department of Psychology since 1975, for which she served as Chair 1994-1997. Markman currently serves as Senior Associate Dean of the Social Sciences of the School of

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

and

Social Sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

. She has also served as Stanford's faculty representative to the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

and the

Pacific-10 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the Western United States. It participates at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I, Division I level for all sports, and its Co ...

Book

''Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems of Induction'', MIT Press (1989)

References

External links

The Markman LabEllen Markman's Faculty biography

* ttps://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/publications/markman-ellen-m "Ellen M. Markman: An Oral History,"Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program, 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Markman, Ellen Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Developmental psycholinguists Women cognitive scientists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania alumni Stanford University Department of Psychology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society