Bryan Matlen, Psychology, (Advisors Anna Fisher, David Klahr)
3rd yr PIER-3rd yr Psych
Bryan graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis ’07 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Human Development. For his undergraduate thesis, under the guidance of Dr. Silvia Bunge, he examined the role of perceptual similarity on young children’s analogical reasoning. Bryan was inspired by the cutting-edge research being conducted on children’s learning and so applied to graduate schools across the U.S with the goal of ultimately helping to answer the question, how do children learn and how can educators best facilitate children’s learning in the classroom? He was able to fool a number of schools into thinking he was smart, and so, decided upon Carnegie Mellon’s psychology program because of it’s strong investment in rigorous education research.
In his first year at Carnegie Mellon, Bryan conducted two projects, one dealing with 4- and 5-year-olds inductive reasoning and the other with preschool-age children’s analogical transfer of story-based problems. The overarching theme that characterizes Bryan’s interests is how reasoning from something familiar can facilitate children’s understanding of unfamiliar concepts. Bryan’s research aspirations for PIER center on how cognitive science can be applied to effectively impact educational practice, and in particular, the role that analogy plays in the teaching of scientific concepts to elementary school-age children.
Some may be surprised to learn that before Bryan decided to pursue a career in educational research, he initially aspired to be a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Unfortunately though, that fell through.