# About the laboratory.

A research lab rooted in development and learning, studying how people seek information, understand other minds, and interact with artificial agents.

## An answer has a history.

Learning happens through questions, explanations, observation, and conversation. We study how children and adults seek knowledge, judge the answers they receive, and make sense of other minds.

Development and learning are the foundation of Curtainplate Laboratories. Our work connects language, cognition, and social understanding with human–AI interaction. Some studies involve people interacting with chatbots, voice assistants, or robots. Others test language models directly on theory-of-mind tasks.

Our name points toward the famous curtain of Oz—and toward a useful scientific habit: looking closely at what produces the responses we see.

## Where our research began

Burcu Ünlütabak led our earlier work as the Curiosity and Learning Lab (_Merak ve Öğrenme Laboratuvarı_), first at Nuh Naci Yazgan University and later at Yeditepe University. The lab studied children’s questions, early science learning, language and storytelling, and spatial thinking. At Yeditepe, our TÜBİTAK project and our paper on theory of mind in language models extended this work to artificial agents.

Ünlütabak founded Curtainplate Laboratories and continues to lead it. Onur Bal coordinates the lab.

[Read our lab history](/about/history.md) · [Meet the team](/people.md)

## Our principles

### Curiosity first

A question marks the place where an explanation has not yet reached. We begin there.

### Look underneath

A response is evidence. What produced it is a further question. We keep the two apart.

### People matter

People give us their time and trust. Our methods, records, and conclusions must answer to that.

## Research is something we do together.

Our work brings together developmental psychology, experimental design, technology, data, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

[Join the team](/join/team.md)

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[Curtainplate Laboratories](/index.md) · [Research](/research.md) · [People](/people.md) · [Publications](/publications.md) · [About](/about.md) · [Contact](/contact.md) · [Join us](/join.md) · [Take part](/participate.md) · [Privacy](/privacy.md)