Rachel F. Barr

Rachel F. Barr is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on understanding the learning and memory mechanisms that development during infancy. Because infants are preverbal techniques rely on imitation and learning methods to find out what infants have learned and how well and how long they remember it. Research has focused on how infants pick up information from different sources, television, siblings, adults, and different contexts. Most recently, research at the Georgetown Early Learning Project focuses on factors that might enhance infant learning from television.

Dr. Barr was trained as a developmental and clinical psychologist in New Zealand. Since 2001 she has been director of the Georgetown Early Learning Project. The ELP shows that babies, toddlers and young children pick up information from a variety of sources, from television, from books, from computers, from touchscreens, from siblings, and across contexts. There are still many open questions about how babies and young children learn and remember.