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Maleen Thiele

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Senior Scientist | Group Leader

Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig

phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 403
e-mail: maleen_thiele@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de

Research Interests
Curriculum Vitae
Research Awards & Funding
Publications

Research Interests

I'm a psychologist interested in the developmental foundations of human social learning. In my doctoral research, I studied how preverbal infants attend to social interactions between others, how their own intrinsic motivations shape their attentional orienting, and how they come to use social partners to learn about their environment. During my postdoc, we initiated a comparative project currently investigating how joint attention influences early memory stages of object-related learning across great ape species.

Since 2023, I am leading the Minerva Fast Track Group "Facets of Early Social Learning", which focuses on observational social learning and visual attention orienting. The methodological focus of the group is on refining eye-tracking technology for its application with non-human great apes and in remote field settings.

Curriculum Vitae

Career 
Since 11/2023

Senior Scientist | Group Leader
Minerva Fast Track Group "Facets of Early Social Learning"  

11/2021 - 11/2023

Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology
Max Planck Insitute of Evolutionary Anthropology 

06/2020 - 11/2021

Phd Student
Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology
Max Planck Insitute of Evolutionary Anthropology 

08/2018 - 12/2018

Visiting Researcher
Uppsala Child and Baby Lab
Uppsala University

12/2016 - 05/2020

PhD Student | Research Associate 
Department of Early Child Development and Culture
Leipzig University

Education 
12/2016 - 11/2021

Dr. rer. nat. Psychology
Leipzig University | Thesis title: "The social attentional foundations of infants' learning from third-party social interactions"

10/2014 - 10/2016

M. Sc. Psychology
Leipzig University | Thesis title: “The sense of own and others’ deservingness in children and chimpanzees”

10/2010 - 10/2013

B. Sc. Psychology
Leipzig University | Thesis title: “The effect of age on emotional memory: investigating the role of psychological arousal”

Languages
  • German (native speaker)
  • English (fluent)
  • French (basic) 

Research Awards & Funding

11/2023 - 11/2026

Minerva Fast Track Fellowship
Max Planck Society

2022

Outstanding Dissertation Award
International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS)

08/2018 - 12/2018

Scholarship for Guest Researchers
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD)

Publications

Michel, C., & Thiele, M. (2025). Revisiting the object-processing paradigm in the study of gaze cues: What two decades of research have taught us about infant social learning. Infancy, 30(2): e70007.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Padberg, M., Hanus, D., Thiele, K. M., Wang, D., Howard, L. H., Grosse Wiesmann, C., Maurits, L., Eckert, J., & Haun, D. B. M. (2025). Social attention increases object memory in adult but not younger great apes. Animal Behaviour, 221: 123081.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Stengelin, R., Petrović, L., Thiele, M., Hepach, R., & Haun, D. B. M. (2024). Social reward predicts false belief understanding in Namibian Hai||om children. Social Development, 33(4): e12767.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Stengelin, R., Bohn, M., Sánchez Amaro, A., Haun, D. B. M., Thiele, M., Daum, M. M., Felsche, E., Fong, F. T. K., Gampe, A., Giner Torréns, M., Grueneisen, S., Hardecker, D. J. K., Horn, L., Neldner, K., Pope-Caldwell, S. M., & Schuhmacher, N. (2024). Responsible research is also concerned with generalizability: Recognizing efforts to reflect upon and increase generalizability in hiring and promotion decisions in psychology. Meta-Psychology, 8.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Steffan, A., Zimmer, L., Arias-Trejo, N., Bohn, M., Ben, R. D., Flores-Coronado, M. A., Franchin, L., Garbisch, I., Grosse Wiesmann, C., Hamlin, J. K., Havron, N., Hay, J. F., Hermansen, T. K., Jakobsen, K. V., Kalinke, S., Ko, E.-S., Kulke, L., Mayor, J., Meristo, M., Moreau, D., Mun, S., Prein, J. C., Rakoczy, H., Rothmaler, K., Oliveira, D. S., Simpson, E. A., Smith, E. S., Strid, K., Tebbe, A.-L., Thiele, M., Yuen, F., & Schuwerk, T. (2024). Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood. Infancy, 29(1), 31-55.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Thiele, M., Kalinke, S., Michel, C., & Haun, D. B. M. (2023). Direct and observed joint attention modulate 9-month-old infants’ object encoding. Open Mind, 7, 917-946.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Farris, K., Kelsey, C. M., Krol, K. M., Thiele, K. M., Hepach, R., Haun, D. B. M., & Grossmann, T. (2022). Processing third-party social interactions in the human infant brain. Infant Behavior and Development, 68: 101727.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C., & Haun, D. B. M. (2021). Infants’ preference for social interactions increases from 7 to 13 months of age. Child Development, 92(6), 2577-2594.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Legg, E. W., Farrar, B., Lazić, A., Thiele, M., Kampis, D., Mani, N., Sesar, K., Klapwijk, E., Schlingloff, L., Reindl, E., Li, K., Birovljević, G., Attwood, M., Tatone, D., Yuniarto, L. S., & Ostojic, L. (2021). Assessing the reporting and interpretation of non-significant results in the study of cognitive development: A systematic review.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Astor, K., Thiele, M., & Gredebäck, G. (2021). Gaze following emergence relies on both perceptual cues and social awareness. Cognitive Development, 60: 101121.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C., & Haun, D. B. M. (2021). Observing others’ joint attention increases 9-month-old infants’ object encoding. Developmental Psychology, 57(6), 837-850.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Thiele, K. M. (2021). The social attentional foundations of infant's learning from third-party social interactions. PhD Thesis, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig.
Open Access    BibTeX   Endnote   

Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C., Gredebäck, G., & Haun, D. B. M. (2021). Social interaction targets enhance 13-month-old infants' associative learning. Infancy, 26(3), 409-422.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote