Kelsey Moty

Clinical Assistant Professor | New York University
Department of Psychology

Education

PhD in Experimental Psychology (Cognition & Perception)
Concentration in Developmental Psychology
New York University | New York, NY

MPhil in Experimental Psychology
New York University | New York, NY

BA in Psychology, Linguistics
(minor in Polish Language and Literature)
University of California, Berkeley | Berkeley, CA

I’m a cognitive scientist and developmental psychologist interested in how children learn language and concepts.

What I currently do

While I still spend a lot of time reading and thinking about these topics, mostly these days, I am focused on pedagogical tools and innovation. Specifically, I am deeply interested in how to make technical and quantitative skills more accessible to students, especially those who have traditionally felt discouraged from entering this space. My goal is that students leave the classroom with (a) a basic toolkit in programming and statistics, (b) the confidence to trust their skillset to solve problems, and (c) the ability to learn on their own when they immediately can’t.

My teaching philosophy takes a constructivist approach, viewing students as active learners within the classroom (e.g., Bruner, 1960). Thus, I seek to create a classroom environment that encourages students to engage deeply with the course material through in-class discussions and hands-on activities. This includes scaffolding students’ learning of new techniques before asking students to independently use them (e.g., progressing from highly structured tutorials on R to semi-structured assignments to a minimally-structured final project). I find my students succeed the most when this is coupled with ample opportunities to (a) easily interact with me and other students outside of class (e.g., on a Slack or Discord server), (b) ask questions anonymously during class, and (c) complete low-stakes after-class assessments to check in on comprehension.

When designing courses, I specifically create curricula that present material in a “spiral” fashion, such that key concepts are presented at a general level early within a course and revisited frequently with increasing levels of specificity each time. This choice is guided by psychological research (e.g., Bransford & Johnson, 1972) that suggests people have better memory for topics presented within context. For statistics courses, this spiral starts with a broad overview of main statistical tests as well key concepts (e.g., what a test statistic/p-value/confidence interval/effect size is) early within the first few lectures to provide a roadmap of how topics are related to each other. For content courses, this looks like providing an overview of key frameworks and theories guiding psychological research to provide a lens for students to contextualize specific areas of research. By presenting topics in a more spiral and less linear fashion, students revisit the same concepts multiple times throughout the semester and are provided opportunities to discover how topics are interconnected.

Finally, I take a decolonized approach to teaching, which means that I (a) ensure the representation of diverse voices and perspectives in my course materials and (b) provide context for the concepts being taught. That is, who conducted the research (and who participated), what motivated them to conduct the research, and who did the research benefit. In research methods and quantitative courses, for example, this includes addressing the history of statistics and the beliefs held by those who developed many statistical methods, as well as demystifying the idea that data and quantitative methods are inherently unbiased and objective.

What I’ve done

Prior to taking a teaching-focused position, I spent a lot time doing research that explored language, concepts, and social cognition. As a PhD student (in Dr. Marjorie Rhode’s lab), I examined how language influences the ways in which we think and learn about the world. In particular, I was interested in how children’s early pragmatic development influences early conceptual development, and how parents may inadvertently communicate social stereotypes to young children through the kinds of inferences that children make about their language choices. Additionally, I explored how the cultural context shapes conceptual development.

Prior to NYU, I worked with Dr. Amanda Brandone (at Lehigh University) examining early conceptual development in preschool-aged children as well as the impact of early motor experience and social interactions on the development of infant intention understanding.

What I do outside of academia

I spend an inordinate amount of time playing volleyball (indoor, grass, sand, all of it..), competing every year at USAV Open Nationals and the Pottstown Rumble (plus plenty of other local tourneys in the tri-state area). I try to get to as many concerts and live shows that my wallet will allow for, with some of my 2025 favorites including Hozier, Balu Brigada, Magdalena Bay, Sam Fender, and flipturn. My current long-term goal is to build enough stamina to summit Mt. Shasta, a mountain I spent the first 18 years of my life staring at from a distance.