Thanks, Charles Hirschkind, for your clever approach to the complicated conversational thread running through the New Directions in the Study of Prayer group meetings. As a developmental psychologist who takes a socio-cultural approach to studying cognitive development, I’m not sure whether I should take the position of Ms. Socio-Cultural or Ms. Cognitive in your hypothetical conversation. But from my perspective there is common ground to be found if we start from the perspective of building and creating knowledge together from the strengths of different disciplinary methods. How boring if we all took the same approach. So I’ve added an additional scholar to your conversation.
Rebekah Richert
Rebekah Richert (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at University of California, Riverside. She graduated in 2003 with her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Dr. Richert received an International Research Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to examine children’s developing understanding of religious rituals. Dr. Richert recently received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study children’s and adults’ concepts of the soul. Dr. Richert’s research into the development of religious cognition has been published in leading journals in developmental psychology and cognitive science of religion, and has been presented nationally and internationally.
Posts by Rebekah Richert
February 26, 2013
The Role of Prayer in the Development of Religious Cognitions
Children's religious concepts undergo significant transitions during the preschool years. Their understanding of ritual actions, God, and supernatural causality undergo qualitative shifts.