Professor of Psychology, Boston College

Senior Research Associate, Harvard Project Zero

Director, Laboratory for Teaching, Learning, and Cognition in the Arts

Ellen Winner

winner@bc.edu

Current Research

With collaborators from Harvard Project Zero, I studied what is taught in serious visual arts classes for adolescents.  We identified eight “studio habits of mind”  taught in the art studio:  observe, envision, reflect, express, engage & persist, stretch & explore,  craft, and learning about the art world.  This work is published in our new book, Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education. With Lynn Goldsmith and Lois Hetland, I am  now developing measures for assessing the learning of these dispositions, and the possible transfer of the disposition to envision to the area of geometric reasoning.

In research directed by doctoral student Thalia Goldstein, our lab is studying the relationship between acting and social cognition (understanding others’ mental states and empathy for others).

We are

Thinking in the Visual Arts: Does it Transfer?

Theater and Social Cognition

Effects of Music Training on Brain and Cognition
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With doctoral student Jen Drake and undergraduate Amanda Redash I am studying the perceptual skills underlying the ability to draw realistically at a young age, in typical children and in children with autism.

Artistic Giftedness

With Dina Kirnarskaya,  musicologist from Moscow, and undergraduate Katherin Redman, I am studying the musical abilities of mathematicians and the role of music in the lives of mathematicians, compared to those in non-mathematical fields.  

Music and Math
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With Gottfried Schlaug at the Music Neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, I am following young children (ages 5-7) at the beginning of their music training over a period of 3-5 years and comparing them at baseline to an untreated control group of children getting no music training, and a small treated control group studying Spanish. We are looking at the effects of instrumental music training on children’s brain growth and brain functioning, as well as on a wide range of cognitive outcomes.