Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D.
Professor and Co-Director
Professor, Department of Psychology
Co-Director, UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences
Dr. Andrew N. Meltzoff is a professor of Psychology and the Co-Director of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. A graduate of Harvard, with a PhD from Oxford, he is an internationally renowned expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation helped transform our understanding of early cognition and social learning and sparked experiments on infant neural body maps in developmental cognitive neuroscience. His research on preschoolers' social biases and children's gender stereotypes about STEM has helped build bridges between developmental science and social psychology. His recent work on infant altruism and the role of cultural values in the development of young children’s prosocial behavior further expands these interdisciplinary connections.
Meltzoff's research on infant and child development has implications for cognitive psychology, especially concerning memory and intentionality; for brain science, especially for multimodal coding and shared neural networks for perception and action; and for educational science, especially for the impact of societal stereotypes on children’s interests, development, and aspirations. Meltzoff's 'Like-Me' framework for social development, which holds that young children register other social beings as 'like me,' has engendered empirical and theoretical work in autism spectrum disorder, social robotics, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.
Dr. Meltzoff received the 2020 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) for a lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. In 2020, he received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology from the American Psychological Association (Division 7). Dr. Meltzoff was awarded the Kurt Koffka Medal (Germany) in 2016. He also received the Kenneth Craik Award in Psychology, Cambridge University (2005), was recognized for outstanding research by the Society for Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics (2005), and was the recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Meltzoff is a fellow/elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Cognitive Science Society, APA, and APS, and is a foreign member into the Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters. In 2018 he was named one of the 50 Most Influential Living Psychologists.
Dr. Meltzoff has published more than 300 papers/chapters, and has a Google Scholar h-index of 136. He is the co-author of two books about early learning and the brain: Words, Thoughts, and Theories (MIT Press, 1997) and The Scientist in the Crib (Morrow Press, 2000). He is co-editor of The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases (Cambridge University Press, 2002), a multidisciplinary volume combining neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and developmental psychology.
Dr. Meltzoff is currently the President-elect (2026) of the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 7 (Developmental Psychology). He has served on the scientific advisory board of the Bezos Family Foundation, the board of directors of the national Zero to Three organization (WA, DC), and the board of advisors for the Bay Area Discovery Museum. He has also served on the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine National Research Council Board on Children, Youth, and Families, the board of directors of the Foundation for Early Learning (founded by Melinda Gates and Mona Locke), the board of directors of the University Child Development School, and the national advisory committee for grants of the March of Dimes Foundation. Dr. Meltzoff has helped raise awareness about the importance of science and child development for society, having appeared on PBS' Scientific American Frontiers, ABC's World News Now and Good Morning America, NBC's Today Show, and the CBC's Discovery series. He has co-authored prominent op-ed pieces on how children's STEM stereotypes influence identity development and schooling (Washington Post, 2017; Los Angeles Times, 2017; Scientific American, 2022).