Publications

Scott, M. E., Hopkins, E. J., Masters, A. S., McMillan, B., Collins, M. F., Dore, R. A., Lawson-Adams, J., Preston, M. L., Toub, T. S., Schatz, J., McMillan, B., Dickinson, D., Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2025) Beyond book reading: New pathways to vocabulary development through playful learning. Early Education and Development. Advance online publication. 

Dore, R., Scott, M., Weaver, H., Preston, M., Hopkins, E. J., Collins, M., Lawson-Adams, J., Toub, T., Dickinson, D., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2025). For preschoolers, word knowledge falls on a continuum: A novel framework for capturing the incremental process of word learning. Journal of Child Language, 52, 892-917. 

Evans, N. S., Schlesinger, M. A., Hopkins, E. J., Jaeger, G. J., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2021). Are preschoolers creative? A review of the literature. In S. W. Russ, J. D. Hoffmann, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Lifespan Development of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

​Hopkins, E. J., & Lillard, A. S. (2021). The Magic School bus dilemma: How fantasy affects children’s learning from stories. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 210, 105212.

​Hopkins, E. J., & Weisberg, D. S. (2021). Investigating the effectiveness of fantasy stories for teaching scientific principles. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 203, 15047.

​Weisberg, D. S., & Hopkins, E. J. (2020). Preschoolers’ extension and export of information from realistic and fantastical stories. Infant and Child Development, 29(4), e2182.

​Dore, R. A., Shirilla, M., Hopkins, E. J., Collins, M., Scott, M., Schatz, J., Lawson-Adams, J., Valladares, T., Foster, L., Puttre, H., Toub, T. S., Hadley, E., Golinkoff, R. M., Dickinson, D., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Education in the app store: Using a mobile game to support preschoolers’ vocabulary learning. Journal of Children and Media, 13(4), 452-471.

​Hopkins, E. J., Weisberg, D. S., & Taylor, J. C. V. (2019). Does expertise moderate the seductive allure of reductive explanations? Acta Psychologica, 198.

​Hopkins, E. J., Toub, T. S., Hassinger-Das, B., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Playing for the future: Redefining early childhood education. In D. Whitebread et al. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education. SAGE Publications Ltd.

​Weisberg, D. S., Hopkins, E. J., & Taylor, J. C. V. (2018). People's explanatory preferences for scientific phenomena. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3(44).

​Zosh, J. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Hopkins, E. J., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Neale, D., Solis, S. L., & Whitebread, D. (2018). Accessing the inaccessible: Redefining play as a spectrum. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1124.

​Hopkins, E. J., & Weisberg, D. S. (2017). The youngest readers' dilemma: A review of children's learning from fictional sources. Developmental Review, 43, 47-70. 

​Hopkins, E. J., Weisberg, D. S., & Taylor, J. C. V. (2016). The seductive allure is a reductive allure: People prefer scientific explanations that contain logically irrelevant reductive information. Cognition, 155, 67-76.

Hopkins, E. J., Smith, E. D., Weisberg, D. S., & Lillard, A. S. (2016). The development of substitute object pretense: The differential importance of form and function. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17(2), 197-220.

​Weisberg, D. S., Taylor, J. C. V., & Hopkins, E. J. (2015). Deconstructing the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(5), 429-441. 

Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., & Lillard, A. S. (2015). Do children learn from pretense? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 130, 1-18. 

​Lillard, A. S., Dore, R. A., Hopkins, E. J., & Smith, E. D. (2015). Challenges to research on play: Mending the methodological mistakes. In J. E. Johnson, S. G. Eberle, T. S. Henricks, & D. Kuschner (Eds.), The handbook of the study of play (pp. 445–452). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 

​Lillard, A. S., Lerner, M. D., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R., Smith, E. D., & Palmquist, C. M. (2013). The impact of pretend play on children’s development: The state of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 1-34.

Lillard, A. S., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., Palmquist, C. M., Lerner, M. D., & Smith, E. D. (2013). Concepts and theories, methods and reasons: Why do the children (pretend) play? Reply to Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013); Bergen (2013); and Walker and Gopnik (2013). Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 49-52.