Can video games change children’s ideas about nutrition?

Previous research has shown that television advertising can influence children’s food choices and their understanding of healthy eating habits. In our research, we want to find out whether online games that feature candy, cakes, and other foods can have the same effect.

Do children think they can control chance events?

Even when games involve chance, adults often have the illusion that they can control the outcome. For example, when rolling dice, adults who want a small number often roll the dice softly, while adults who want a large number roll the dice vigorously. Our research investigates whether children understand that some events are based purely on chance, and whether they also act like they can control these kinds of uncontrollable events.

How do children remember the things that they see?

For adults, categories help us to remember things. Although the visual world is dynamic and complicated, we can use our knowledge of categories to carve up a scene and to store information efficiently in the brain. Past work has shown that people are sometimes better at remembering multiple images if they come from different categories (i.e., two faces and two scenes) rather than a single category (i.e., four faces). This study aims to understand how categorizing visual images helps children remember what they see. Because children are still learning new categories, they provide a window into the way that we use our knowledge of categories to boost our memory for visual scenes.

Is learning affected by the kinds of evidence generated during play?

Preschool children may be able to learn causal relationships from small amounts of evidence. This study examined how children learn new theories without any previous knowledge, and how quickly this learning can take place.

How does an object’s name affect children’s expectations during play?

This study asked: Do children explore more when the evidence they see conflicts with their assumptions about the physical properties of an object, based on the name the object is called?

Do children’s theories about the world affect their play?

Before children hold an adult-like "mass theory" of balance (e.g., that objects balance at their center of mass), they hold a "center theory", believing that an object will balance in the middle regardless of the center of mass. This study investigated whether children who had different theories would choose to play with the same toy in different ways.

Do children play more when evidence is not clear?

It is widely believed that children learn by playing, but how does this happen?

This study asked: do children play in more diverse ways with a toy when it is not clear which cause, among several possible causes, makes the toy 'go'.

Do children play more when evidence is not clear?

This study asks if preschool children recognize there is something to “figure out” about a toy whose cause and effect relationships are not presented clearly.

Can children use labels to figure out the properties of objects?

Adults understand that labels or symbols can have different meanings:
they can represent something or tell you about the properties of an object (e.g., a skull and crossbones might tell you that something is poisonous). We want to figure out whether children can also use symbols to make judgments about new objects they encounter.

Does pretend play help children learn about cause and effect?

Young children often play by pretending, but does this kind of play also help them learn? In this study, we’re interested in finding out how children use their imagination to help them understand cause and effect relationships in new situations.