Karima Elgamal

Welcome!

I’m Karima Elgamal, a third-year Ph.D. student in Developmental Science at Boston University, working with Dr. Deborah Kelemen in the Child Cognition Lab. My research explores how children’s explanations reveal the structure of their understanding, specifically, how they use causal and mechanistic reasoning to make sense of the world. I study how explanatory preferences (e.g., mechanistic vs. teleological) and various aspects of explanations support learning, generalization, and conceptual change.

Before BU, I earned my M.A. in Psychological Sciences and B.A. in Psychology (with a minor in Cognitive Science) from Montclair State University, where I worked with Dr. Laura Lakusta in the Cognitive and Language Development Lab. My prior work investigated how children and adults use language to describe mechanical support relations and spatial configurations, bridging insights from cognitive development and linguistics.

Across my projects, I combine experimental methods, developmental theory, and quantitative modeling in R to understand how explanation drives learning. My goal is to uncover how children’s intuitive theories of the physical, biological, and social world transform through explanation.

My research has been supported by multiple awards, including the Boston University Dean’s Fellowship and the American Psychological Foundation’s Sharon Stephens Brehm Scholarship, and presented at conferences such as CogSci, BUCLD, Cognitive Development Society (CDS), and the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).