I am a third year PhD student in the psychology department at UC Berkeley, working with Tom Griffiths and Tania Lombrozo. I'm interested in understanding the role that explanation plays in learning.

For both children and adults, generating and receiving explanations results in the acquisition of knowledge in a way that results in long term retention, and the transfer and generalization of this knowledge to novel situations and problems. Why does explaining have this effect? The research I do explores a number of factors that underlie explanation’s role in learning and generalization.

If you have any questions about this research, please feel free to contact me at joseph_williams AT berkeley DOT edu.