As a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar in the Interdisciplinary Research on Infant Development programme, I am investigating the developmental precursors of social communication and knowledge transmission in early childhood. In one project, I am specifically interested in infants’ active use of communicative cues (such as social referencing and pointing) to seek information from others in situations of uncertainty and unequal distribution of knowledge. In another project, I am studying how young children learn new information through independent exploration and trust in others' testimony and what information they choose to transmit to an ignorant social partner. I use behavioural, head-mounted eye-tracking and physiological methods to investigate these questions.

I hold a Master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. and an M.A. from Belarus State University. Before coming to Lancaster, I did research at the Harvard Lab for Developmental Studies (Spelke lab), Social Cognitive Development Lab at Yale University, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

PUBLICATIONS 

Bazhydai, M., Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (in press). Exploration and curiosity. In J. B. Benson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of infant and early childhood development. Elsevier Press.

Bazhydai, M., Westermann, G., & Parise, E. (submitted). “I don’t know but I know who to ask”: 12-month-olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults.

Bazhydai, M., Silverstein, P., Westermann, G., & Parise, E. (submitted). Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions.

Ronfard, A., Unlutabak, B., Bazhydai, M., Nicolopoulou, A., & Harris, P. L. (submitted). Preschoolers in Belarus and Turkey accept but do not empirically verify an adult’s counter-intuitive claim.

Smolla, M., Invernizzi, E., Bazhydai, M., Casoli, M., Deffner, D., Faria, G. Jones, N., Kanwal, J., Staehler, A.-M., & Uchiyama, R. (2018). 2nd Annual Workshop of the Association of Early-Career Social Learning Researchers in St Andrews, Scotland. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews.

Bazhydai, M., Ivcevic, Z., Widen, S. C., & Brackett, M. A. (2019). Breadth of emotion vocabulary in early adolescence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 38, 378-404.

Ivcevic, Z., Bazhydai, M., Hoffmann, J., & Brackett, M. (2017).  Creativity in the domain of emotions. In J. C. Kaufman, V. Glaveanu, & J. Baer (Eds), Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Different Domains. 

Hoffmann, J. D., Ivcevic, Z., Zamora, G., Bazhydai, M., & Brackett, M. (2016). Intended persistence: Comparing academic and creative challenges in high school. Social Psychology of Education, 19(4), 793-814.

Ebert, M., Hoffmann, J. D., Ivcevic, Z., Phan, C., & Brackett, M. (2015). Teaching emotion and creativity skills through art: A workshop for children. International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, 25(2), 23-35. 

Ebert, M., Hoffmann, J. D., Ivcevic, Z., Phan, C., & Brackett, M. (2015). Creativity, emotion and art: Development and initial evaluation of a workshop for professional adults. International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, 25(2), 47-59.

Butzer, B., Ebert, M., Telles, S., & Khalsa, S. B. S. (2015). School-based yoga programs in the United States: A survey. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 29 (4), 18-26.

Butzer, B., Day, D., Potts, A., Ryan, C., Coulombe, S., Davies, B., Weidknecht, K., Ebert, M., Flynn, L., & Khalsa, S. B. S. (2015). Effects of a classroom-based yoga intervention on cortisol and behavior in second- and third-grade students: A pilot study. Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, 1, 41-49.

Raskin, M., Kotake, C., Ebert, M., Miller, L., & Easterbrooks, M.A. (2015). Job-related stress and depression in orphanage and preschool caregivers in Ukraine. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 29, 130-145.