Researcher biography
I am a Lecturer in the School of Psychology. My research focuses on examining the cognitive foundations of children's social understanding.How do children learn about the social implications of their behaviour and make sense of the way other people act? I combine cross-cultural, developmental and evolutionary approaches to generate novel perspectives on human social cognition.
Journal Articles
Jones, Alicia K., Nelson, Nicole L., Gautam, Shalini and Redshaw, Jonathan (2025). Children infer counterfactual information from others’ facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 259 106306. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106306
Jones, Alicia K., Gautam, Shalini and Redshaw, Jonathan (2025). The role of controllability and foreseeability in children's counterfactual emotions. Child Development, 96 (3), 1098-1111. doi: 10.1111/cdev.14224
Gautam, Shalini, Nguyen, Giang, Redshaw, Jonathan and Suddendorf, Thomas (2024). Does the tendency to overestimate future emotions motivate practice in young children?. Cognitive Development, 72 101515. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2024.101515
Jones, Alicia K., Gautam, Shalini and Redshaw, Jonathan (2024). Young children experience both regret and relief in a gain-or-loss context. Cognition and Emotion, 38 (1), 163-170. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2023.2258586
Gautam, Shalini and McAuliffe, Katherine (2024). Why imagining what could have happened matters for children's social cognition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 15 (1) e1663. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1663
Gautam, Shalini, Owen Hall, Ruby, Suddendorf, Thomas and Redshaw, Jonathan (2023). Counterfactual choices and moral judgments in children. Child Development, 94 (5), e296-e307. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13943
Gautam, Shalini, Suddendorf, Thomas and Redshaw, Jonathan (2022). Counterfactual thinking elicits emotional change in young children. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377 (1866) 20210346, 1-8. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0346
Gautam, Shalini, Suddendorf, Thomas and Redshaw, Jonathan (2021). When can young children reason about an exclusive disjunction? A follow up to Mody and Carey (2016). Cognition, 207 104507, 104507. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104507
Gautam, Shalini, Suddendorf, Thomas and Redshaw, Jonathan (2021). Do monkeys and young children understand exclusive “or” relations? A commentary on Ferrigno et al. (2021). Psychological Science, 32 (11), 1865-1867. doi: 10.1177/09567976211024641
Gautam, Shalini, Suddendorf, Thomas, Henry, Julie D. and Redshaw, Jonathan (2019). A taxonomy of mental time travel and counterfactual thought: Insights from cognitive development. Behavioural Brain Research, 374 112108, 112108. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112108
Gautam, Shalini, Bulley, Adam, von Hippel, William and Suddendorf, Thomas (2017). Affective forecasting bias in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 159, 175-184. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.02.005
Conference Paper
Gautam, Shalini, Commens, J., Ratcliffe, M., Redshaw, J., Suddendorf, T. and McAuliffe, K. (2025). Cost and choice in children’s social judgments. Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, MN USA, 1-3 May 2025.
Theses
Gautam, Shalini (2022). Imagining past, present and future possibilities: a developmental perspective. PhD Thesis, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/b49b57e
Gautam, Shalini (2015). Affective forecasting in children. Honours Thesis, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland.