Youth Ministry Institute

Dr. Youjung Choi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she directs the Social Cognitive Development Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Missouri under the mentorship of Dr. Yuyan Luo, and completed postdoctoral training at Yale University with Drs. Yarrow Dunham, Laurie Santos, and Karen Wynn, and at Harvard University with Dr. Elizabeth Spelke. Her research focuses, first, on how infants and young children understand others’ minds, and second, on how this understanding and other social capacities (e.g., moral reasoning, intergroup cognition, and language comprehension) contribute to their interpretation of and engagement in social interactions. By examining these processes across various social cues, her work aims to offer insight into the developmental mechanisms underlying social understanding.