Projects

Projects

Current Projects

We are busy investigating some really interesting questions. Read a little more about them below.

How do children think about magical problems?

Young children sometimes encounter “magical problems” in their everyday lives, like a monster living under their bed, an imaginary friend who is behaving badly, or a disappointing gift from a fantasy figure like the Easter Bunny.  How do children think about those “magical problems”?  Do they think about them similarly to real-world problems or do they treat them differently?

Example Past Projects

What relates to children’s feelings of hope?

Hope is an important component of resilience but is under-studied in children.  This brief online survey designed for 8-12 year olds will measure children’s hope as well as self-regulation and social support. The goal is to determine what other factors correlate with hope in children.

Does pretending to be a superhero change children’s game-playing strategy?

When children pretend, do they change how they make decisions in a real game with real consequences? In this study, children play a game with a researcher where they can win tickets and prizes. We are testing whether children’s strategy for winning changes when they are pretending.

Can children learn in pretend play?

Do children ever confuse pretense and reality?  Do children bring real-world rules into pretending? Recently, we found that after one person taught a pretend rule to a child, he or she did not then transfer it to the real world. Now we are testing if encountering the pretend rule with two different people will lead a child to transfer it to the real world.  We are also testing what types of knowledge children are willing to learn in pretending. That is, do children accept new words? Can they learn about emotions?

What is the role of play and guidance in early science education?

Play-based learning and discovery-based learning are often encouraged in science classrooms. However, the evidence for this pedagogies is not clear. In this project, a series of studies in the Kid Think lab and in schools will test whether either of these techniques or the combination of the two is most effective in teaching kindergartners and first graders scientific concepts. This project is made possible by generous funding from the Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood.

Are pretending and inhibitory control related?

Several of our studies probe the link between the ability to control one’s own mind and body and other cognitive abilities.  For example, we have found a relationships between inhibitory control and preschoolers’ prosocial behaviors, like helping and sharing, as well as adolescents’ abstract reasoning. And, our results strongly suggest that having good control is good for pretending!  Now we are investigating whether pretending and inhibitory control are correlated in toddlers.

Do children prefer to learn from people have the same beliefs as they do?

Young children equate pretending with behaving, while older children realize pretending involves the mind and brain. We found that children would rather learn about pretending from a person who understands pretending in the same way they do. This study was done in collaboration with David Sobel at Brown University.

How do people mentally represent pretend actions?

When you think about someone pretending, how does your mind process that information? Does a child’s mind process it in the same way as an adult’s does? We have studied this question by having children and adults listen to or read about people pretending. Then we measure how quickly they are able to respond to ideas that were present in those stories.