About me

I’m an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University. I’m interested broadly in how humans abstract away from the sensory information they receive about the world to create, structure, and communicate higher-level representations. To better understand these processes, my research explores the nature of category systems across languages and over development: how these semantic structures vary, change, and influence thought. My current research focuses on the roles of language and culture in children’s developing conceptualizations of space and relations.

I completed my PhD in psychology at UC Berkeley, in Terry Regier’s Language and Cognition Lab, and postdocs at Radboud University/MPI for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, Stanford University, and UC San Diego.

You can email me at abcarstensen [at] asu [dot] edu.