Derek E Montgomery
Professor
Education
Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Florida
Biography
Dr. Derek Montgomery received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. His doctoral dissertation at Florida earned the APA Division 7 Dissertation Award. He has been at Bradley since 1993.
Teaching
Courses taught by Dr. Montgomery include Principles of Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Experimental Psychology, and Cognitive Development.
Scholarship
Dr. Montgomery’s research addresses the influence of language on young children’s understanding of the thoughts and feelings of themselves and others.
Student research assistants gain experience testing and assessing young children, developing testing material, coding and interpreting data, reading pertinent research literature, and presenting research at conferences. Dr. Montgomery’s students have pursued master’s and doctoral degrees across a range of disciplines and professions. These areas of school psychology, clinical psychology, cognitive science, medical school, social psychology, sport psychology, epidemiology, and legal psychology.
Selected Recent Publications:
Montgomery, D. E., & Tompkins, V. (2026). Language and theory of mind: How children learn about the mind through language. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198909705.001.0001
Tompkins, V., Montgomery, D. E., & Feng, X. (2026). Theory of mind, leisure reading, and reading comprehension in adulthood. Cognition, 274, 106589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106589
Tompkins, V., Montgomery, D. E., Dore, R. A., & Lee, B. K. (2025). Theory of mind and text comprehension across the lifespan: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 61(6), 1112–1125. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001869
Montgomery, D. E., Tompkins, V., & Feng, X. (2024). The theory of mind construct in adulthood: perspective taking in relation to language and executive function. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1435685. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1435685
Montgomery, D. E. (2023). Language and children’s understanding of knowledge: Epistemic talk in early childhood. Mind & Language, 38(4), 1102–1119. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12437
Service
Dr. Montgomery serves on several college and university committees. He also serves his discipline by reviewing manuscripts for many developmental psychology journals.