Dr. Ivan Kroupin

The structure of human cognition is underdetermined by our genetic makeup to a unique degree - evident from our species' unparalleled diversity of cognitive and behavioral repertoires. It follows that determining which repertoire an individual human ends up developing with must involve non-genetic mechanisms. Specifically, culture - cumulatively developed across generations and individually learned in ontogeny - plays a central role in helping to determine the structure individuals' minds. 

My general interest is in developing representational, cognitive accounts of what it how it is that cultural experience structures cognition. I pursue this issue across a variety of topics, with a particular interest in basic cognitive capacities - abstract, analogical reasoning and executive function. The research program is fundamentally interdisciplinary, combining a background of philosophy and developmental cognitive science with emerging work with anthropological and ethnographic insights and methods.