Douglas A. Frye

About

Dr. Douglas A. Frye is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, with a background that includes teaching and research appointments abroad at Cambridge University, as well as research in computer science at Yale University. He returned to the United States to pursue further academic work and has been a faculty member at Penn GSE since 1998. His educational credentials include a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from New York University. Dr. Frye's research concentrates on two primary areas within cognitive development: children’s theories of mind and early mathematical development. His work on theory of mind explores the developmental processes that influence children’s social competence, examining the relationship between theory of mind, executive control, and early childhood development. He investigates how these cognitive developments benefit children’s social-emotional understanding and their comprehension of teaching and learning. His second research focus aims to understand how children acquire mathematical reasoning skills, assessing cognitive changes during early math learning and designing interactive classroom and computer settings to enhance math understanding. Currently, he collaborates with urban Head Start centers to support emergent numeracy and social competence, ensuring young children are prepared for the transition to school.

Research topics

• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Internal medicine
• Surgery
• Cancer research
• Oncology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Intentional Communication and the Development of an Understanding of Mind

  2014-01-14 · 53 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Not just numeracy and literacy: Theory of mind development and school readiness among low-income children.

  Developmental Psychology · 2017-09-21 · 36 citations

  articleSenior author

  The current study investigated the role of theory of mind development in school readiness among 120 low-income preschool and kindergarten children. A short-term longitudinal design was used to examine relations among theory of mind, the understanding of teaching, and learning behaviors and their collective role in children's literacy and numeracy skills at school entry. Results replicate differences in theory of mind development among low-income children as compared to typically studied, higher-…

  PublisherDOI

• Children with autism are impaired in the understanding of teaching

  Developmental Science · 2015-12-08 · 31 citations

  articleSenior author

  Children learn novel information using various methods, and one of the most common is human pedagogical communication or teaching - the purposeful imparting of information from one person to another. Neuro-typically developing (TD) children gain the ability to recognize and understand teaching as a core method for acquiring knowledge from others. However, it is not known when children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) acquire the ability to recognize and understand teaching. This study (total…

  PublisherDOI

• Theory of mind, domain specificity, and reasoning

  2014-06-03 · 31 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Theory of mind has often been characterised as being domain specific, in the sense formulated by Fodor (1983) and applied to development by Carey (1985). This claim means something like the principles and evidence we use in understanding mental states are different from those employed in other domains (e.g. naive physics, biology) and, as a consequence, the developments in this domain are independent of changes in the others. The possibility that theory of mind is domain specific has been argued…

  PublisherDOI

• Cognitive universals and cultural variation in teaching

  Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 2015-01-01 · 22 citations

  letterSenior author

  We address three issues: (1) There is a need for a comprehensive multidisciplinary understanding of teaching; (2) teaching is a natural cognitive ability for humans; and (3) there is a need to incorporate the mentalistic and cultural approaches to teaching. We suggest certain research studies that can help deepen our understanding of the cognition of teaching.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elliot Soloway

  57 shared

• Henry Braun

  53 shared

• Randy Elliot Bennett

  Educational Testing Service

  53 shared

• Philip David Zelazo

  University of Minnesota

  35 shared

• Stuart Marcovitch

  University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  16 shared

• Chris Moore

  Dalhousie University

  12 shared

• Homan Mohammadi

  Mayo Clinic in Florida

  8 shared

• Ulrich Müller

  University of Victoria

  7 shared

Similar researchers at University of Pennsylvania

• Xinyin Chenh-70
• Rachel B. Bakerh-63
• Yuko Goto Butlerh-28