Dr Frankie Fong

Frankie's research interests lie broadly in early childhood social cognitive development, with a particular interest in children's imitative behaviour, selective trust, and normative understanding across diverse social learning contexts and cultural landscapes. He employs an experimental and cross-cultural approach to study factors that influence children's social learning modes and outcomes, such as predagogical cues, social motivations, task efficieny, presentation medium, and parenting/educational style. He is also interested in digital media effects on children's socio-cognitive development, evaluating digital screens as children's modern social learning partner. Frankie has established, coordinated, and conducted developmental research with parents and children across urban and indigenous communities in East and West Malaysia. Frankie is currently a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology in Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is also a Guest Scientist at the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipizig, Germany; and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Sunway University, Malaysia. Frankie now holds an Honorary research appointment at the School of Psychology of the University of Queensland.