Dr. Frankie Fong

Frankie Fong is a lecturer in developmental psychology at the School of Psychological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), New Zealand. He is also an honorary research fellow at the University of Queensland, a guest scientist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and an adjunct research fellow at Sunway University, Malaysia. His research interests lie broadly in early childhood social cognitive development, with a particular interest in children’s imitation and conformity 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 approaches and outcomes, such as pedagogical cues, learning motivations, and parenting/educational style. He has established, coordinated, and conducted developmental research with parents and children across urban and Indigenous communities in East and West Malaysia. Recently, Dr. Fong is also involved in research related to digital media effects, religious cognition, and climate/environmental psychology. He is a member of the Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure (CAFE) Consortium and the Developing Belief Network (DBN). Dr. Fong is currently an associate editor for Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

At the RCC he is a collaborator in the “Changing Environments, Changing Childhoods” research group.

Selected Publications

• with Daniel B. M. Haun. “Two Gaps in Studying High-Fidelity Imitation Across Diverse Childhood Ecologies.” Child Development Perspectives 19, no. 4 (2025): 189–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12543.
• with Alejandro Erut and Cristine H. Legare. “Schools as Cultural Reproduction Devices.” In Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, edited by Jamshid J. Tehrani, Jeremy Kendal, and Rachel L. Kendal. Oxford University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.75.
• with Manuel Bohn, Sarah Pope-Caldwell, Roman Stengelin, and Daniel B. M. Haun. “Understanding Cultural Variation in Cognition One Child at a Time.” Nature Reviews Psychology 3, no. 10 (2024): 641–43. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00351-8.
• with Mark Nielsen and Kathleen H. Corriveau. “I copy you as I believe you know about our culture: Combining Imitation and Selective Trust Literatures.” Infant and Child Development 32, no. 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2453.
• with Mark Nielsen and Andrew Whiten. “Social Learning from Media: The Need for a Culturally Diachronic Developmental Psychology.” In Advances in Child Development and Behavior. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, vol. 61. Academic Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2021.04.001.