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Publications
Publications (42)
We investigated the impact of parents’ open-ended questions during collaborative science activities. Specifically, we randomly assigned 116 parents (69.8% mothers; 89.7% White) and their 4- to 7-year-old children (50.9% girls; 87.9% White) to watch science television before or after completing an engineering activity. Using sequence analysis, we ex...
The pervasiveness of digital media and the importance of language skills underscore a pressing need to understand the role of media in language development. Historically, research has focused on the quantity of children’s media use but there has been a recent focus on content (i.e., the kinds of media that children use), context (i.e., who children...
Educational Technologies (EdTech) refers to apps, coding robots, educational videos, websites, e-books, and games allegedly designed to promote children’s learning. EdTech is changing how children learn and will likely become increasingly common in future years. In this review, we focus on EdTech used in preschool and early primary school classroom...
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...
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Although the presence of toys in childhood has remained steady for decades, the types of toys that fill children’s toy boxes have changed, especially over the last 10–15 years. Many of today’s toys are marked by technological enhancements, from a shape sorter driven by a singing bear to robotic plastic animals designed...
This study describes how 3-to 8-year-olds' justifications for their reality status judgements about people on YouTube relates to their age and previous YouTube watching experience. Using a within-subjects design, children were asked about their beliefs regarding the reality status of a purported YouTube video and provided justifications for their r...
Children learn about much of the world through testimony and may hear explicit belief statements (e.g., “I believe in God” or “climate change is real”) about entities whose existence is controversial. Prior research has shown that these statements, when spoken by a parent, influence children's beliefs about the reality status of the entity and thei...
Research Findings: Multiple factors likely influence the language development of young children growing up in low-income homes, potentially including stressors experienced by parents. Here, we ask: (1) What is the association between stress (i.e., economic hardship and parenting stress) and toddlers’ language development? and (2) Does number of hou...
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...
This study examined the dimensionality of caregivers’ child-directed talk and the association of child directed talk and children’s language skills at age of 3 years in a sample of 63 low-SES dyads in low-SES homes. Exploratory factor analysis identified that caregivers’ child directed talk is characterized by two dimensions: quantity and complexit...
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...
Even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, one of the children’s most common screen activities was using the video-sharing platform YouTube, with many children preferring YouTube over television. The pandemic has significantly increased the amount of time many children spend on YouTube—watching videos for both entertainment and education. However, it is un...
Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other language-enhancing activities like shared reading and caregiver-child interactions. Furthermore, the extent to which children use media with adults (joint media engagement), the extent to which they use interactive media (apps/games), and the tim...
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...
Media use is a pervasive aspect of children’s home experiences but is often not considered in studies of the home learning environment. Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other literacy-enhancing activities like shared reading and decrease the quantity and quality of caregiver–child int...
Joint media engagement (JME) refers broadly to people using media together, including adults using media with children, and captures a variety of experiences that children might have co‐using media that might otherwise be called coviewing, scaffolding, or active mediation. Research suggests that the frequency of JME varies across families and acros...
Background:
Nearly 13 million American children experience food insecurity. Research suggests that maternal depression is associated with food insecurity, such that mothers who experience depression are more likely to be food insecure. Maternal self-efficacy may be an important protective factor against depression during the postpartum year, inter...
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 this chapter, we will explore explanations for this conflicting evidence, and importantly, demonstrate the power of evidence-based recommendations for e-book use. In an effort to compare traditional books and e-books, this chapter will apply four pillars of learning generated from the Science of Learning (Hirsh-Pasek K, Zosh JM, Golinkoff RM, Gr...
Children learn about the world through others’ testimony, and much of this knowledge likely comes from parents. Furthermore, parents may sometimes want children to share their beliefs about topics on which there is no universal consensus. In discussing such topics, parents may use explicit belief statements (e.g., “Evolution is real”) or implicit b...
Theory of mind is the understanding that other people have mental states that drive their actions and that those mental states can be different from one’s own. Without understanding theory of mind and being able to take others’ perspectives, it could be difficult for children to read and understand narrative texts. This paper posits that children’s...
One potential advantage of e-books is that unlike traditional books, preschoolers can read independent of an adult by using the audio narration feature. However, little research has investigated whether children comprehend a story's content after using an e-book with audio narration. The current study compares preschoolers’ comprehension of an e-bo...
Digital media and electronic toys are changing the landscape of childhood. How does this change impact language learning? In this chapter, we explore potential alignment between six established principles of language learning and children's engagement with digital media and electronic toys. We argue that electronic toys and digital media are not so...
As the United States and other countries consider “educational reform,” the discussion appears to be primarily about fostering basic skills and content knowledge. Our contention is that this approach is not sufficient. Instead, we argue that for twenty-first century success, we must also foster creativity to prepare today’s children to excel and so...
White American adults assume Blacks feel less pain than do Whites, but only if they believe Blacks have faced greater economic hardship than Whites. The current study investigates when in development children first recognize racial group differences in economic hardship, and examines whether perceptions of hardship inform children's racial bias in...
Adults adopt the traits of characters in narratives, but little is known about whether children do so. In Study 1, 7- and 10-year-olds ( N=96 ) heard a 2.5-minute recording about a professor or cheerleader. Reporting higher engagement in the professor narrative related to more time playing with an analytical toy (a Rubik’s cube), whereas reporting...
Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered. For lang...
Empirically analyzing empirical evidence
One of the central goals in any scientific endeavor is to understand causality. Experiments that seek to demonstrate a cause/effect relation most often manipulate the postulated causal factor. Aarts et al. describe the replication of 100 experiments reported in papers published in 2008 in three high-ranking...
We examined the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and engaging in fantasy worlds in a short-term longitudinal study. Engagement in fantasy worlds might advance ToM because engaging in alternative worlds is similar to imagining the world from others’ viewpoints. Fantasy might also be related to preference for describing others’ mental states...
Social values theory was used to examine how parents make decisions for their adolescent children. Social values theory states that decision making for others is based on the social value of an action, leading to a norm for how to decide for others, whereas self decisions are influenced by a number of additional factors. Consistent with a risk-aver...
Previous research indicates that American adults, both Black and White, assume a priori that Black people feel less pain than do White people (Trawalter, Hoffman, & Waytz, 2012, PLoS One, 7[11], 1–8). The present work investigates when in development this bias emerges. Five-, 7-, and 10-year-olds first rated the amount of pain they themselves would...
Against a long tradition of childhood realism (Piaget, 192934.
Piaget , J. 1929. The child's conception of the world., New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. View all references), A. S. Lillard and J. H. Flavell (1990) found that 3-year-olds prefer to characterize people by their mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) than by their visible b...
We greatly appreciate the astute comments on Lillard et al. (2013) and the opportunity to reply. Here we point out the importance of keeping conceptual distinctions clear regarding play, pretend play, and exploration. We also discuss methodological issues with play research. We end with speculation that if pretend play did not emerge because it was...
Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered. For lang...