PAST STUDIES
Independent Evaluation Study
Independent Evaluation is a newly launched study in the Social Learning Lab. The aim of this study is to understand children’s ability to critically evaluate information offered by experienced adults (e.g. teachers) and non-experienced adults. Past research has shown that young children around the age of 5 are pretty good at judging the accuracy and competence of informants. Here we ask given a label of a more experienced informant v.s. a non-experienced informant, whether children could focus on evaluating the content of the information they provided, instead of following the labels. We think children’s executive function abilities and their parents’ socializations goals would also play a role in such process. We plan to recruit and collect data in the summer.
Children’s Questions and Teacher Explanations in Science Learning
Within the context of science learning, we are interested in understanding how teachers respond to children’s questions. For example, when a child asks the question, “What makes a rainbow?”
Do teachers respond by providing an explanation (“It has something to do with rain”) or turning the question back to the child (“What do you think?”). In this study, we are also interested in exploring how the type of response teachers provide to children’s questions might relate to how they think children learn about science. In a series of studies, we ask teachers to think about how they would respond to children’s questions in hypothetical science situations. Ultimately, by gathering this information, we hope that this research will improve science instruction in early childhood and elementary years.
Curiosity and Learning (CAL) 1
Does eliciting curiosity in preschoolers impact their learning outcomes?
Curiosity is often anecdotally regarded as important in early learning, but there has not been much research exploring the direct links between curiosity and learning in early childhood. In addition, measuring and eliciting curiosity in children has been difficult for a variety of reasons. If being curious really does help children learn, exploring how we can create situations that engage children and make them feel curious could be beneficial for early learning practices.
In this study, 4- and 5-year-old children will play a short computer game to measure their individual curiosity. Then they will read a book with an experimenter; some children will read a typical storybook while others will read the same book modified to elicit curiosity. After the book reading all children will play a few short games to see what they learned from the content of the book. Parents will also be asked to fill out a brief survey about their child’s curiosity. This study will help us understand how curiosity impacts early learning.
Selective Learners
How do children figure out who is trustworthy and who is not?
Research in our lab has shown us time and again that young children are quite adept at deciding from whom to learn. By 5 years of age, children keep track of what adults say and the mistakes that they make. Children at this age appear less likely to learn from speakers who have made a lot of mistakes. Not only is it important for children to use good judgement when deciding who they want to learn from, children also need to be able to protect themselves from trusting someone they shouldn’t. The current study explores how well children use verbal and non-verbal behaviors when figuring out whether to trust what an adult says about the location of a hidden toy. This study is also hoping to shed light on the underlying cognitive mechanisms that allows young children to make these decisions of trust based on verbal and nonverbal inputs.
In this study, children are asked to watch some videos in which an adult will provide testimony about the location of a hidden toy. After viewing the video, children are asked where they think the toy is hidden, and their response and explanations are recorded. The final portion of this study is meant to assess children’s understanding of involuntary actions, that some actions are harder to control than others. By including this measure, we hope it will reveal some of the underlying mechanisms that allow developing minds to better assess trustworthiness.
Familiar Character Trust (FACT)
Do children selectively trust familiar media characters and does this trust have behavioral outcomes in consumer and learning decisions?
Children are exposed to a variety of learning figures during childhood, such as parents, teachers, peers, and even the media, and often have to distinguish between these information sources when learning about the world around them. Media characters may be an emerging source of information for young children due to repeated exposure and interactions across different channels, such as T.V., games, and merchandise. Due to these interactions, children may form perceived relationships with these characters, impacting who and how they select information sources.
This study looks at how children ages 4-6 select information sources from a variety of familiar media characters and unfamiliar characters and if these choices change depending on context, for example if the decision is about a product for sale or a novel object. Children will select media characters they’ve seen before from a variety of popular characters, then they will be told a story about their favorite media character and a new, unfamiliar media character about the name of a novel object. Next, the child will play a game in which the previous characters will give their opinions on two small toys. They will be given stickers and asked how many stickers they think each toy is worth. This study has helped us understand how advertising using familiar media characters can impact children’s selective trust.
Study Helping Inquiry and Exploration (SHINE)
How can we best support children’s ability to ask scientific questions?
An important part of the scientific process is asking questions. Some questions—like “how” and “why” questions—are particularly important for learning about cause and effect. Although children are natural question-askers, it would be helpful for parents and educators to know more about how to spark kids’ curiosity and get them to generate questions. By asking more questions—especially scientific questions about how the world works—we can empower young scientists to gain a deeper, richer understanding of the world around them.
In this study, children ages 4-8 be presented with pictures of gears or circuits and prompted to generate questions about them. For some questions, children will receive assistance or inspiration to generate more questions. For example, a puppet friend may model question-asking for them, or a researcher may help them create the beginning of a question that they can complete.
Little Epistemologist
What do children believe about knowledge and knowing?
Our epistemological understanding (EU)—that is, one’s beliefs and reasoning about the nature and justification of knowledge—has important implications for critical thinking in both formal and informal learning contexts. Indeed, teens’ and adults’ beliefs about the certainty, source, justification, and truth of knowledge have been associated with the unique ways in which they evaluate others’ reasoning and trustworthiness. But what about younger kids? Traditionally, young children’s EU has been theorized to be strictly absolutist--that is, their personal theory of knowledge holds that it is simple, certain, and objectively true. However, recent work on children’s critical thinking suggests that perhaps young children’s EU is more diverse than previously believed.
In this study, children ages 4-6 will read three stories with a researcher in which the two characters disagree about (1) an objective matter of fact (e.g. when were pianos invented?), (2) a subjective matter of opinion (e.g. is this painting pretty?), and (3) a question of interpretation dependent on both facts and interpretation (e.g. is the coach mean?). By asking questions about how they make sense of disagreements, children can give us insights into their beliefs about the nature of knowledge.
Pedagogical Utterances
How does adult linguistic input influence diverse children’s exploratory learning?
Children are highly flexible learners, able to gain a better understanding of their world from multiple channels of information. For example, previous research suggests that children are more likely to explore and learn about the various hidden functions of a novel toy when an adult introduces it with a question (“I wonder what happens when you push this button?”) rather than a direct instruction (“I want you to push that button.”). However, this study featured predominantly middle-class, white children-- a demographic in which parents are more likely to use questions to prompt children's learning. What kinds of pedagogical utterances promote exploratory learning in children from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds?
Recording children’s exploratory play with the toy allowed us to examine whether different types of language impacted the amount of time spent playing, the number of different functions of the toy that were discovered, and even the number of spontaneous questions asked. Furthermore, we can better understand whether the effects of language input type (question vs. instruction) on children’s play varies by child background.
Generic Language and Social Groups
Does the use of generics to describe a novel social group lead children to attribute fewer mental state experiences and abilities to group members?
Essentialist thinking, or the belief that members of a social group have an underlying and inherent “essence” which defines them, can have negative consequences for children’s and adults’ interactions with others. Previous research has shown that social essentialism can lead to stereotyping, and prejudice and discrimination (e.g., girls are inherently bad at math; Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017). Dehumanization, or the perception that some social groups possess fewer uniquely human qualities and mental state capabilities (e.g., emotional depth, intelligence) is another pervasive social bias that has negative outcomes for intergroup relations (Haslam, 2006). The aim of the present study was to investigate if 5- to 10-year-old children would be less likely to attribute mental states to, and thus perhaps dehumanize, an essentialized social group. This research has informed our understanding of the social transmission of potentially harmful beliefs about different cultural groups.
Independent Evaluation Study
How does informant social dominance and reasoning affect whom children choose to learn from?
Research has found that children between the ages of 4 and 5 can differentiate between good and bad arguments (e.g. circular vs. non-circular). On the other hand, a person’s power, or social dominance, can also influence whether a child chooses to trust the information he or she provided. The current study explores whom children would prefer to learn from when a bad argument is provided by a powerful person and a good argument is provided by a less powerful person.
In this study, 5- to 8- year-old children are first presented with decision-making scenarios that will indicate a puppet’s social dominance, shown through one puppet constantly deferring to the other puppet’s decision. Once social dominance is established, the child will have to determine which puppet answered a scientific question better: the subordinate puppet with a strong reasoning or the dominant puppet with a weak reasoning. Last, children will be asked about objects they have never seen before. We predict that children are more likely to prefer strong explanations, even if they come from a subordinate informant. Children’s own personality may also influence their preferences of the informants. This information will help us better understand how children learn from their peers, teachers, and parents.
Electricity Box
Following up from the previous study, we have designed a study to research the effects of the quality of explanations on a child’s understanding of an electricity box. In the first part, the child is presented with a box containing colorful buttons and switches, some of which turn on a light when pressed. The experimenter provides either a circular/bad explanation, a non-circular/good explanation or no explanation at all about how the light turns on. In the second part, the child is presented with a new but similar electricity box and asked to turn on the light. We observe how long it takes them to activate the light and whether they imitate any behaviors based on the type of explanation they received before. This study takes about 15 minutes.
Preference for familiar informants
Infants treat familiar caregivers as a secure base. For example, when encountering an unknown person, they often seek emotional reassurance from their mother. Do children turn to a familiar caregiver not just for reassurance, but also when seeking information? Any preference for a familiar caregiver in these learning situations would have implications for early childhood education. In particular, given the high rate of teacher-turnover, children might be at a disadvantage when learning from a relative stranger. We find that most children show a preference for learning novel information from their mother over a stranger – and from a familiar teacher over an unfamiliar one. We also find that children show a preference for familiar-sounding informants (people who speak with their same accent). We are interested in looking at just how far children trust a familiar person – and in ways that we can make an unfamiliar (or unfamiliar-sounding) person seem trustworthy.
Preference for prior accuracy
Do children assess the reliability of their informants in any way beyond attachment and familiarity? In a series of studies, we have found that preschoolers are extremely sensitive to a speaker’s prior accuracy, but this sensitivity changes through the preschool period. When faced with two unfamiliar informants, 3-year-olds monitor for informant inaccuracy, mistrusting any informant who labels a familiar object incorrectly . Four-year-olds are more forgiving, preferring a relatively accurate informant who makes occasional mistakes over one who makes frequent mistakes. This memory for an informant’s record of accuracy is quite stable, lasting up to a week after children’s initial exposure to the informants.
What happens when familiarity and accuracy are placed in conflict? For example, which person do children trust when a familiar informant proves inaccurate or an unfamiliar informant proves accurate? In two studies, we have observed a marked developmental change: 3-year-olds’ preference for a familiar teacher or for a person with a familiar native accent is not affected by whether those informants prove inaccurate. By contrast, 5-year-olds prefer an unfamiliar teacher or a person with a non-native accent if they prove to be more accurate.
Children’s understanding of informants as experts
Do children judge informants who are knowledgeable as having positive traits in other domains? Such “halo effects” are a classic area of inquiry in social psychology, yet little is understood about whether young children are prone to them. We have examined this issue in the domains of causal reasoning and word learning. We find that 4-year-olds are sensitive to informant expertise, but only use it when the expert’s knowledge pertains to key internal properties of an object, rather than surface properties, such as color.
Two other studies show additional support for children’s sensitivity to informant’s expertise. When preschoolers are asked to discriminate between an accurate and inaccurate informant, they do not view accuracy as a global trait. For example, they do not claim that an accurate informant is physically “stronger”. Similarly, when given information about an informant’s luck and accuracy, preschoolers prefer to learn new information from a previously accurate informant, regardless of her luck status. Taken together, the results of these several studies show children are surprisingly astute. They think of expertise and accuracy as specific rather than global traits.
Learning from testimony in specific domains
Classic research in cognitive development has emphasized how children learn from their own first-hand experience. Yet children learn about many scientific and historical phenomena on the basis of other people’s claims and not on the basis of their own observations. Thus, we have examined how children differentiate the functions of the mind from the functions of the brain and how children understand the learning process. In both of these projects, we found that the claims that children hear affect how they view the phenomenon in question.
The majority of this line of research focuses on how children learn about historical figures. Because children cannot travel back in time, they can only learn about history from the claims made by other people. We find that children use their causal knowledge to identify the narratives as historical or fictional. Older children (aged 5-7) use fantastical (i.e. causally implausible) narrative episodes to conclude that protagonists in such narratives are fictional rather than historical. We are currently exploring how children construe religious narratives. For example, children hear religious narratives in which the protagonist performs acts that violate familiar causal principles (e.g., walks on water). Do children accept that the protagonist is a historical figure or do they assume that the narrative and the protagonist are simply fictional?
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is necessary across all academic domains and previous research has shown young children view adults as important sources of information when learning. The aim in this is study is to understand whether children’s use of adult explanations might alert them to the importance of using negative evidence as a component of critical thinking skills. Children will be presented with a game with play foods, in which the goal is to figure out the rule for “What goes in my basket?”, based on guesses and adult feedback. The child is read a story and asked questions designed to access their use of evidence to generate hypotheses. A computer-based game assess the child’s self-regulatory abilities. There will be a pre and post-test too assess whether children of vary ages can improve their critical thinking skills with guidance from adults.
Magical Thinking
Cultures across the world believe that thoughts can directly impact outcomes. For instance, the believers in the evil-eye claim that if you make a person jealous, that person can cause you harm through nothing more than a glance. In this study, we will investigate whether adults and children believe that intentions or emotions can have a causal impact on an outcome. We specifically investigate the relative contributions of emotions and intentions in the perceived efficacy of magical thinking. The data collected from the Euro-American participants will then be compared to a representative sample of Turkish participants, whom, we anticipate, will demonstrate a stronger belief of mental causation.
Scientific Inquiry Study
The Scientific Inquiry study investigates the impact of lecture based learning versus scaffolding and guided learning. This involves 4-6-year-old children and their parents playing with different toys together. We assess the different explanations and questions that parents give during the interaction with their child. The study involves two conditions; the control condition in which the parent is given a scripted information about a gears toy to tell the child, versus the intervention condition in which the parent is given a choice of Science Questions to investigate such as; “What happens when I spin one of the gears?” or “What happens when I switch two gears?” In each condition the parent watches an experimenter do this with the child beforehand. This study was informed by research findings indicating the benefits of guided learning and scaffolding.
Parent Child Conversations About Scientific Talk in Book-Reading
Caregivers play a fundamental role in supporting children’s development of science inquiry skills, as they provide explanations that scaffold children’s causal and scientific thinking. Our study looks at what types of explanations help children learn scientific concepts, and how storybooks can be a fun and interactive way to present STEM related information to children.
In this study, parents and children are given the chance to learn, discuss and apply scientific concepts related to the idea of electricity. The goal was to promote causal explanations in parent and child language by embedding this kind of talk in a storybook and giving them the chance to apply what they learn by building a circuit together. We hope that the results from this study will inform parents and educators about how to best promote children's scientific learning.
Scientific and Religious Cognition Studies
We are delighted to announce that in collaboration with the Early Childhood Lab at Harvard University (Director, Paul Harris), the Social Learning Lab has launched a new project examining how children from the USA and other countries conceptualize religious and scientific claims. With this project, which has been generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation, we plan to run several studies that aim to answer the following questions:
1. What are the cognitive differences and similarities in children’s conceptualization of scientific and religious phenomena?
2. What is the transmission process involved in these conceptualizations?
3. Are there any cultural universals in these conceptualizations?
Biracial Project
The Bi-racial project is examining learning and social preferences in biracial Black/White or Latino/White children, ages 5-8 years. In particular, we aim to see children’s racial sharing preferences. In the study the child and parent will read a book together, and the child will participate in a sharing activity.
STEM Perceptions Study
We are interested in exploring how caregivers talk to their children about STEM activities. In this study, children (ages 4-7 years) and their caregivers will be asked to discuss a short picture book together. In the picture book, characters are shown engaging in a variety of STEM activities (e.g. building a robot, investigating plants). After the caregiver and child are finished talking about the pictures in the book, the researcher will introduce the child to a novel science game and invite them to share their beliefs about the game. We would like to explore the kind of language caregivers use when talking about the pictures with their children and how these explanations may influence children’s interaction with the game. This research will allow us to better understand the factors that may encourage children to learn and engage in science.
Attractiveness
From an early age, children are sensitive to physical traits of the individuals they interact with: they prefer the faces that belong to their own race over the ones that belong to another race and their learning preferences are affected by the race of the informants. They also judge attractive faces more positively and prefer to learn from attractive rather than unattractive individuals even when the attractive informant is inaccurate. To extend these findings, we ask how children weight these two visual cues-race and attractiveness--to social group membership. With this study, we are trying to answer: (1) Do children’s general preference for the attractive faces persist when the informants’ race is different than their own? (2) Which physical cue is stronger in determining children’s preferences? Will children prefer attractive out-group face over the less attractive in-group face or vice versa?
TACT Study
Our TACT study investigates whether children believe written material or spoken language is more trustworthy. The study involves children watching a video of two people naming unfamiliar objects by either reading the name from a piece of paper or saying the name. The child is then asked which name they think is right and which informant they believe is more trustworthy. The children are also given a WPPSI vocabulary test and play a words and pictures matching task.
Curiosity and Learning (CAL) Study
Does eliciting curiosity in preschoolers impact their learning outcomes?
Curiosity is often anecdotally regarded as important in early learning, but there has not been much research exploring the direct links between curiosity and learning in early childhood. In addition, measuring and eliciting curiosity in children has been difficult for a variety of reasons. If being curious really does help children learn, exploring how we can create situations that engage children and make them feel curious could be beneficial for early learning practices.
In this study, 4- and 5-year-old children will read a book with an experimenter; some children will read a typical storybook while others will read the same book modified to elicit curiosity. After the book reading all children will play a few short games to see what they learned from the content of the book. Parents will also be asked to fill out a brief survey about their child’s curiosity. This study will help us understand how curiosity impacts early learning."