Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at Temple University

Spatial skills like block building and puzzle making are associated with later growth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning. How these early spatial experiences—both in concrete and digital platforms—boost children’s spatial skills remains a mystery. This study examined how children with low- and high-parental education use...

Decades of research on joint attention, coordinated joint engagement, and social contingency identify caregiver-child interaction in infancy as a foundation for language. These patterns of early behavioral synchrony contribute to the structure and connectivity of the brain in the temporoparietal regions typically associated with language skills. Th...

Research suggests that parents and caregivers are concerned about their children’s increasing screen media use. While the focus to date has primarily been on the number of hours of screen media use and the educational content screens offer, the latest research suggests a more nuanced approach is needed that focuses on the impact of screen media use...

In gaining word knowledge, children’s semantic representations are initially imprecise before becoming gradually refined. We developed and tested a framework for a digital receptive vocabulary assessment that captured varied levels of representation as children learn words. At pre-test and post-test, children selected one of four images to match a...

Educational and playful forms of media are both pervasive in children’s media landscape. Children tend to see play and learning as distinct, whereas parents tend to recognize the overlap between these categories; however, little research investigates children’s and parents’ conceptions of media as learning or play. Children (N = 80, five- and seven...

Informal learning spaces present ripe opportunities to supplement formal learning experiences. In this paper, we offer a new approach to creating enriching learning activities for public spaces that reflects evidence‐based practices rooted in developmental psychology and uses community‐centring practices from participatory research approaches. We f...

This study aimed to elucidate how cultural values and the ECE context in three distinct countries —South Korea, Spain, and Germany— shape teachers’ perspectives on their pedagogy. This study unveiled three key findings. First, the study identified partial strong invariance for the pedagogical beliefs measure. Second, Korean ECE teachers showed sign...

This study describes the implementation and effectiveness of an instructional coaching program for kindergarten teachers in the State of New Hampshire that was implemented in response to the State’s play-based kindergarten mandate. Coaching was provided to 20 teachers from across the State. It focused on guided play, principles of how children lear...

Research demonstrates that phubbing—the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at one's mobile phone—interferes with the quality and satisfaction of social interactions. This article examined how observations of an adult's phone use during a social interaction impact different social judgments. Adult participants (n = 331) watched a...

The target article tackles an important and complicated issue of the underlying links between curiosity and creativity. Although thought-provoking, the target article overlooks contemporary theories and research on these constructs. Consequently, the proposed model is inconsistent with prior research in the developmental and educational fields and...

Research suggests foster children are at risk for poor language skills. One intervention, attachment and biobehavioral catch-up (ABC), was shown to successfully improve not only young foster children’s attachment to their parents, but also their receptive vocabulary skills (Bernard et al., 2017; Raby et al., 2019). Given that language acquisition i...

The valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual‐language‐learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed the Dual Language Learners English‐Spanish (DLL‐ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S. English‐Spanish DLLs. The inventories provide translation equivalents for all Spanish and English items on Communicative D...

Introduction There has been a surge of research on the power of play to facilitate learning in recent years. Guided play, specifically, has emerged as an optimal learning approach over free play and direct instruction. However, whether parents' attitudes toward play align with the emerging research remains largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, t...

Background The number of inpatient mental health facilities for children and adolescents in the United States is growing rapidly. While undergoing inpatient treatment, children and adolescents can benefit from innovative play opportunities designed to foster social interaction and learning. Methods The Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) initiative...

Preventative parent-coaching programs can improve early interaction quality, language skills, and academic outcomes for children experiencing economic adversity. Using a community-based participatory research framework, we piloted Duet, a preventative, parent-implemented, early language intervention. We assigned home visitors to provide Duet or sta...

A growing body of evidence from the science of learning demonstrates the educational effectiveness of active, playful learning. Connections are emerging between this pedagogy and the broad set of skills that it promotes in learners, but potential mechanisms behind these relations remain unexplored. This paper offers a commentary based on the scienc...

Early screening for language problems is a priority given the importance of language for success in school and interpersonal relationships. The paucity of reliable behavioral instruments for this age group prompted the development of a new touchscreen language screener for 2-year-olds that relies on language comprehension. Developmental literature...

Shared book reading is a common and effective way to support vocabulary knowledge. However, it is not the only pedagogy for supporting this learning goal. We propose a “toolbox” of activities that teachers can use to foster vocabulary acquisition in young children. We first discuss the science behind why these activities are effective (they are act...

Research from the interdisciplinary science of learning indicates that children learn best when they are actively engaged in learning that is meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful. These principles coalesce in active playful learning, especially guided play. This active, playful pedagogy enhances learning through intentional instr...

It is well known that infants undergo developmental change in how they respond to language-relevant visual contrasts. For example, when viewing motion events, infants’ sensitivities to background information (“ground-path cues,” e.g., whether a background is flat and continuous or bounded) change with age. Prior studies with English and Japanese mo...

Introduction Curiosity is an important social-emotional process underlying early learning. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement at kindergarten, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage. Because characteristics of the early caregiving and phys...

The first 5 years of life are characterized by incredible growth across domains of child development. Drawing from over 50 years of seminal research, this chapter contextualizes recent advances in language sciences through the lens of developmental cascades to explore complexities and connections in acquisition. Converging evidence-both classic and...

What if the environment could be transformed in culturally-responsive and inclusive ways to foster high-quality interactions and spark conversations that drive learning? In this article, we describe a new initiative accomplishing this, called Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL). PLL is an evidence-based initiative that blends findings from the scienc...

This study examined preschool teachers' fidelity in implementing a vocabulary intervention. The purpose of the study is to inform the scaling up of vocabulary interventions, identifying strategies that are both feasible for teachers and effective for vocabulary learning. We analyzed data from a vocabulary intervention in which teachers (n = 10) tau...

High-quality communicative interactions between caregivers and children provide a foundation for children's social and cognitive skills. Although most studies examining these types of interactions focus on child language outcomes, this paper takes another tack. It examines whether communicative, dyadic interactions might also relate to child execut...

Introduction This research examined the classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS) for identifying preschool-aged children (3;0 to 6;9) with developmental language disorder (DLD). We present data from two independent samples that varied in prevalence and diagnostic reference standard. Methods Study 1 included a clin...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between interaction quality and child language ability. We focused on one promising interaction quality indicator—the rate of multiturn conversational episodes. We also explored whether the relationship between rate of single conversational turns and language ability changed when the...

Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (und...

There is a great interest in studying creativity in children. Yet, the current literature on preschool creativity is sparse. Extending on work in the innovation literature, we propose that uncertainty, curiosity, and exploration are vital components of a larger model of creativity. In the current chapter, we examine this new model of creativity and...

Although e-books allow young children to read independently, children could be missing out on opportunities to develop positive emotional associations with reading. The current study explored whether there are differences in emotions and physiological arousal when parents and children read traditional books or e-books together or when children list...

Verbs serve as the architectural centerpiece of sentences, making verb learning pivotal for language acquisition. Verb learning requires both the formation of a verb-action mapping and the abstraction of relations between an object and its action. Two competing positions have been proposed to explain the process of verb learning: (a) seeing a highl...

Question use is a key feature of high-quality language input and supports language development. The current study examined how different types of maternal questions were associated with children's language outcomes, and how the associations were moderated by children's existing vocabulary skills and family socioeconomic status. Participants were 16...

High-quality language interactions not only support children’s language development but also promote better long-term academic outcomes (Hirsh-Pasek, Adamson et al., 2015; Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Pace et al., 2019; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). Interactions in the form of frequent back-and-forth conversations between caregiver and child predict la...

Spatial skills are fundamental for mentally manipulating objects, visualizing and remembering the locations of objects and their paths, reconstructing patterns, and recognizing locations from a variety of perspectives. Despite their link to children's performance in mathematics and to later success in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mat...

Although questions fuel children’s learning, adult cell phone use may preoccupy parents, affecting the frequency of questions parents and children ask and answer. We ask whether parental cell phone use will lead to a decrease in the number of questions children and parents ask one another while playing with a novel toy. Fifty-seven parent child dya...

Objective : Until recently, normative data on language and communication development among children in the United States have not been available to inform critical efforts to promote language development and prevent impairments. This study represents the first psychometric assessment of nationally representative data derived from a National Survey...

Preschool vocabulary interventions have reported modest increases in learning of target words, with wide variability among participants. To design interventions that are effective for all learners, more fine-grained information is needed. In the present study, English-only and dual language learner preschoolers (n = 128) were taught new words durin...

Memorializes Leslie Rescorla (1945-2020). Rescorla, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Class of 1897 Professor of Science Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College, passed away in Havertown, PA on October 12, 2020. Rescorla, who was born in Washington, DC on August 15, 1945, came to Bryn Mawr in 1985; where she taught in the Psychology Department and directe...

Objective To examine the main and interactive effects of the amount of daily television exposure and frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing on parent ratings of curiosity at kindergarten, and to test for moderation by socioeconomic status (SES). Study design Sample included 5100 children from the Early Childhood Longitud...

Despite the growing interest in early science education, there is much left to be explored, particularly in majority Dual Language Learning (DLL) classrooms. The current study examined 1) early science opportunities across classroom contexts in majority Spanish-English DLL Head Start classrooms, 2) the languages (i.e., English and Spanish) that tea...

The 30‐million‐word gap, the quantified difference in the amount of speech that children growing up in low‐resourced homes hear compared to their peers from high‐resourced homes, is a phrase that has entered the collective consciousness. In the discussion of quantity, the complex and nuanced environments in which children learn language were distil...

Public space interventions offer one example of how to translate cognitive science into the public square. Here, we detail several successful projects and the six principles of learning that underlie them that support caregiver–child engagement, interaction, and the use of content area–specific language. Policy and community implications are also d...

Creativity is typically measured using divergent thinking tasks where participants are asked to generate multiple responses following a prompt. However, being able to generate responses captures only a partial picture of creativity. Convergent thinking, in which a single solution is chosen, is an equally important part of creativity that is often l...

Spatial skills support STEM learning and achievement. However, children from low‐socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds typically lag behind their middle‐ and high‐SES peers. We asked whether a digital educational app—designed to mirror an already successful, spatial assembly training program using concrete materials—would be as effective for facilitating...

Spanish-speaking families in the United States must often overcome multiple challenges to support their young children’s early language development (e.g., language and cultural barriers, financial stress, limited learning resources, etc.). These challenges highlight the need for early language interventions tailored to the needs of Spanish-speaking...

The present study examined the roles that language of assessment, language dominance, and teacher language use during instruction play in Dual Language Learner (DLL) science scores. A total of 255 Head Start DLL children were assessed on equated science assessments in English and Spanish. First overall differences between the two languages were exa...

Contingent interactions between caregivers and infants, in which caregivers respond promptly and meaningfully to infants’ behaviors, lay a foundation for language learning. Three pathways have been proposed for how contingent interactions promote the development of language skills: temporal, semantic, and pragmatic. Here, we argue that these pathwa...

Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) has become a viable, evidence-based approach for addressing inequity in learning by merging architectural design and placemaking with the science of learning. PLL embeds learning opportunities in places where families regularly go (e.g., bus stops, supermarkets, and laundromats) and transforms them into engaging an...

Purpose Understanding variability sources in early language interaction is critical to identifying children whose development is at risk and designing interventions. Variability across socioeconomic status (SES) groups has been extensively explored. However, SES is a limited individual clinical indicator. For example, it is not generally directly m...

Parkopolis, the life-sized board game, was designed to promote conversation and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. We investigated whether this exhibit also prompted questioning. Care-givers' and children's STEM-related question-asking was compared between Parkopolis (i.e., experimental group) and a STEM-themed contr...

Experts have expressed concerns about the lack of evidence demonstrating that children’s “educational” applications (apps) have educational value. This study aimed to operationalize Hirsh-Pasek, Zosh, and colleagues' Four Pillars of Learning into a reliable coding scheme (Pillar 1: Active Learning, Pillar 2: Engagement in the Learning Process, Pill...

Verb extension is a crucial gauge of the acquisition of verb meaning. In English, studies suggest that young children show conservative extension. An important test of whether an early conservative extension is a general phenomenon or a function of the input language is made possible by Chinese, a language in which verbs are more frequent and acqui...

Children need unstructured exploration and time to tackle problems that interest them

Introduction and objectives Developing a language screener for Dual Language Learners presents numerous challenges. We discuss possible solutions for theoretical and methodological problems often encountered in the development of such a test and illustrate possible solutions using a newly developed language screener for Dual Language Learners. Mat...

This study investigated the relation between Dual Language Learners’ (N = 90) vocabulary and grammar comprehension and word learning processes in preschool (aged 3‐through‐5 years). Of interest was whether: (a) performance in Spanish correlated with performance in English within each domain; and (b) comprehension predicted novel word learning withi...

Since the advent of television in the 1950s, parents, educators, researchers, and policy makers have been concerned about the effects of screen time on children's development. Then, when computers became widely used, a new wave of interest in the positive and negative effects of this new medium was generated. Within the past 15 years, the developme...

Infants from low‐socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher‐SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh‐Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low‐income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later over...

The American education system is not preparing all children to thrive. Amidst a national movement to dismantle systemic racism, our schools risk propagating educational inequity by design. Only the most affluent students receive the highest quality education that emphasizes student agency and engagement through collaboration and inquiry. 1 Many sch...

During the unprecedented coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, virtual education activities have become more prevalent than ever. One activity that many families have incorporated into their routines while at home is virtual storytime, with teachers, grandparents, and other remote adults reading books to children over video chat. The current study...

Children’s early spatial thinking abilities are predictive of their later STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) achievement. While research has primarily focused on spatial skills in the home environment, spatial learning can also occur in schools and in informal learning settings in the real world. Despite calls for implementati...

Early spatial skills predict the development of later spatial and mathematical skills. Yet, it is unclear how comprehension of the words that capture spatial relations, words like behind and under, might be associated with children's early spatial and mathematics skills. The current study addressed this question by conducting a moderated mediation...

Participating in play affords physical, social, and cognitive benefits. Here, we review the cognitive behavioral science literature highlighting the value of play and describe the different types of play along with the evidence linking play to positive outcomes for children in areas such as social-emotional, cognitive, academic, and social-emotiona...

Copious evidence indicates that, even in the first year of life, children’s language development is beginning and is impacted by a wide array of cognitive and social processes. The extent to which these processes are dependent on early language input is a critical concern for most deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, who, unlike hearing childre...

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) focused language and interactions build a foundation for later STEM learning. This study examines the ability of the life-size math and science board game "Parkopolis" to foster STEM language and interaction in young children and their families. This study is part of a larger initiative called Playf...

Spatial skills are associated with mathematics skills, but it is unclear if spatial training transfers to mathematics skills for preschoolers, especially from underserved communities. The current study tested (a) whether spatial training benefited preschoolers' spatial and mathematics skills, (b) if the type of feedback provided during spatial trai...

Block-building skills at age 3 are related to spatial skills at age 5 (citation removed) and spatial skills in grade school are linked to later success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though studies have focused on block-building behaviors and design complexity, few have examined these variables in relation to fu...

Infants must learn to carve events at their joints to best understand who is doing what to whom or whether an object or agent has reached its intended goal. Recent behavioral research demonstrates that infants do not see the world as a movie devoid of meaning, but rather as a series of sub-events that include agents moving in different manners alon...

Modern libraries are reimagining their spaces as more than repositories for books. The Play-and-Learn Spaces project married developmental science with the changing nature of 21st century libraries. The study asked if it is possible to augment learning in informal spaces using the built environment to encourage discourse and interaction. For this p...

Focused on community play memories, the goals of this project were to (1) uncover the variety and degree of playful learning memories; (2) ascertain whether community members would spontaneously share memories of play, and (3) appraise whether memories differed between low-income and mixed-income communities. Results indicated that although communi...

Infants appear to progress from universal to language-specific event perception. In Japanese, two different verbs describe a person crossing a bounded ground (e.g., street) versus an unbounded ground (e.g., field) while in English, the same verb - crossing - describes both events. Interestingly, Japanese and English 14-month-old infants form catego...

A child’s early language skills are one of the best predictors of academic success, and a number of community interventions have aimed to increase caregiver–child interactions to improve language development and related outcomes. This article describes ongoing community efforts in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aimed at enriching...

How can we transform places where people gather or wait into hubs for interaction and playful learning? Bus stops offer one setting in which to test this idea. Urban Thinkscape reimagines an everyday bus stop in an under-resourced area as an interaction zone instead of merely a place to wait for a ride. Results suggest that embedding playful learni...

Despite the prevalence of educational apps for children, there is little evidence of their effectiveness for learning. Here, children were asked to learn ten new words in a narrative mobile game that requires children use knowledge of word meanings to advance the game. Study 1 used a lab-based between-subjects design with middle-SES 4-year-olds and...

In music, we “feel the beat” through rhythm. During successful social interactions, individuals establish an interpersonal rhythm through back-and-forth exchanges. Consequently, these two disparate domains share a common reliance on rhythm. This study investigates whether our sense of musical rhythm relates to our social competence. Ninety-eight un...

This paper reports results from two studies conducted to examine word learning among preschool children in group book reading while we developed a scalable method of teaching words during book reading. We sought to identify factors that fostered both depth and breadth of learning by varying the type of information children heard about words while h...