Ellen Markman is Lewis M. Terman Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.^[1] She specializes in word learning and language development in children, focusing specifically on how children come to associate words with their meanings. Markman contends that in order to learn the meaning of a word, children make use of three basic principles: the whole object assumption (words refer to an object rather than to its parts or features), the taxonomic assumption (labels should be extended to an object of the same kind rather than an object that is thematically related), and the mutual exclusivity assumption (another label can be used to refer to a feature or part of an object). Related topics that Markman has studied include categorization and inductive reasoning in children and infants. Markman subscribes to the innatist school of developmental psychologists, which asserts that children possess innate knowledge that they draw upon in the process of language acquisition.

Her contribution to cognitive and developmental psychology has had significant impact in the field and has been recognized by awards such as the American Psychological Society's William James Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Basic Research and the American Psychological Association’s Division 7 Outstanding Mentoring Award. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2011.^[2]