Exploration, Explanation, and Parent-Child Interaction in Museums

Associations between parents' autonomy supportive management language and children's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics talk during and after tinkering at home

We conducted a time series analysis of parents' autonomy supportive and directive language and parents' and children's STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) talk during and after a problem-solving activity (i.e., tinkering). Parent and child dyads (N = 61 children; Mage = 8.10 years; 31 boys; 54% White) were observed at home via Zoom. After tinkering, a researcher elicited children's reflections, and approximately 2 weeks later dyads reminisced together about the experience. During tinkering, the more autonomy supportive STEM talk parents used in 1 min, the more children talked about STEM in the next minute. During reminiscing, parents' autonomy support was also associated with children's STEM talk. Results suggest the importance of considering how both the content and style of parents' talk can support children's STEM engagement.

Family science capital moderates gender differences in parent-child scientific conversation

This study examined whether variation in parent-child conversations about scientific processes can be explained by child gender and the science-related resources available to parents, known as scientific capital. Parents of 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 70) from across the United States completed a survey of science capital and were then videotaped with their children at home interacting with two science activities (i.e., balance scale and circuit toy). Videos were transcribed and analyzed for parents' science process language. Results indicated that parents' science process language occurred significantly more often during conversations with boys, among families with higher levels of scientific capital, and during the scale activity. Gender differences in science process language were not apparent at higher levels of science capital and during the scale activity. These effects speak to the need for measuring child, family, and contextual characteristics when identifying factors that promote children's early science engagement and learning. Results are discussed in terms of future interventions that could build scientific capital as a means to counteract stereotypes around gender and science.

The intersection of parent questions, child skills, and activity context in informal science, technology, engineering, and math learning

Adult verbal input occurs frequently during parent-child interactions. However, few studies have considered how parent language varies across informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities. In this study, we examined how open and closed parent questions (a) differed across three STEM activities and (b) related to math, science, and vocabulary knowledge in their preschool-aged children. A total of 173 parents and their preschool children (Mage = 4 years) from lower socioeconomic households were video-recorded participating in three STEM-related activities: (a) a pretend grocery store activity, (b) a bridge-building challenge, and (c) a book read about a science topic. Parent questions were categorized as open or closed according to the presence of key question terms. Results indicate that the three activities elicited different frequencies of parent open and closed questions, with the grocery store activity containing the most open and closed questions. Children's science knowledge was predicted by the frequency and proportion of parent open questions during the book read. These results enhance our understanding of the role of parent questions in young children's language environments in different informal learning contexts.

Caregiver and child question types during a museum interaction

Children museums provide an engaging learning environment for families with exhibits designed to stimulate caregiver-child interactions. Specific types of questions have been shown to support child language learning by scaffolding more elaborative responses. This study analyzed the use of question form types during caregiver-child interactions in a children's museum, aiming to discern their correlation with child language proficiency. We examined and transcribed two exhibit explorations by 43 caregiver-child dyads (3- to 6-year-old children). Our analysis encompasses various syntactic question types (e.g., yes-no, wh-) and measures of child language proficiency, including lexical diversity, morphosyntactic complexity, and overall language ability. Findings reveal disparities in question form usage among caregivers and children, with caregivers predominantly employing closed questions and children balancing closed and open-ended types. Children of caregivers who predominantly posed closed questions exhibited shorter utterances and lower overall language scores. Details on other question forms are presented (sub-types of polar, wh-, alternative, and echo). These findings contribute to our understanding of how question form influences language development and caregiver-child interactions.

Causal learning by infants and young children: From computational theories to language practices

Causal reasoning-the ability to reason about causal relations between events-is fundamental to understanding how the world works. This paper reviews two prominent theories on early causal learning and offers possibilities for theory bridging. Both theories grow out of computational modeling and have significant areas of overlap while differing in several respects. Explanation-Based Learning (EBL) focuses on young infants' learning about causal concepts of physical objects and events, whereas Bayesian models have been used to describe causal reasoning beyond infancy across various concept domains. Connecting the two models offers a more integrated approach to clarifying the developmental processes in causal reasoning from early infancy through later childhood. We further suggest that everyday language practices offer a promising space for theory bridging. We provide a review of selective work on caregiver-child conversations, in particular, on the use of scaffolding language including causal talk and pedagogical questions. Linking the research on language practices to the two cognitive theories, we point out directions for further research to integrate EBL and Bayesian models and clarify how causal learning unfolds in real life. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development.

Designing museum exhibits to support the development of scientific thinking in informal learning environments: A university-museum-community partnership

Our objective is to scaffold the natural behaviors that support scientific thinking and STEM learning in children through museum exhibit design and development. Here, we describe a collaborative research-to-practice initiative called "Designing Museum Exhibits to Support the Development Scientific Thinking in Informal Learning Environments: A University-Museum-Community Partnership," in which we document natural behavior in the context of children's informal learning environments and detail our plans to translate our findings into exhibit development. This initiative is part of a long-standing university (UT Austin, Center for Applied Cognitive Science), museum (Thinkery-Austin Children's Museum), and community (Austin's Early Learner Community) partnership called Thinkery Connect. Our first aim here is to review best practices in STEM exhibit design that fosters scientific thinking. We will then describe the design of a study on exhibit signage to promote scientific thinking development. We will also discuss our plans to develop and evaluate exhibit signage in context. Our long-term objective is to deepen engagement in activities that build scientific thinking for visitors at children's museums like Thinkery, at home, and in the community.

Cultural communication in museums: A perspective of the visitors experience

As museums shift their responsibilities and functions towards audience-centered approaches, research on exploring museum cultural communication strategies through visitor experiences has gained increasing attention from both academia and industry. This study focuses on the newly opened Nan Song Deshou Palace Relics Site Museum in Hangzhou, China, completed at the end of 2022, and its visitors. Data were collected through on-site surveys and in-depth interviews. The research findings indicate that the current motivations of museum visitors manifest primarily in three forms: knowledge exploration, social interaction, and psychological restoration. After evaluating the existing museum service quality based on the field of experiential value in marketing management, two main issues and features were identified. The issues include sub-optimal visitor pathways and layout, dissatisfaction with staff services, and shortcomings in promotion and communication. The overall cultural learning and interactive experience for the entire visitor base also require improvement. The features are characterized by differentiated cultural and creative consumption in the museum and the emergence of interrelated consumer demands. Based on these findings, the study provides targeted recommendations for future museum construction and communication strategies.

How does caregiver-child conversation during a scientific storybook reading impact children's mindset beliefs and persistence?

This study explores how caregiver-child scientific conversation during storybook reading focusing on the challenges or achievements of famous female scientists impacts preschoolers' mindset, beliefs about success, and persistence. Caregiver-child dyads (N = 202, 100 female, 35% non-White, aged 4-5, ƒ = .15) were assigned to one of three storybook conditions, highlighting the female scientist's achievements, effort, or, in a baseline condition, neither. Children were asked about their mindset, presented with a persistence task, and asked about their understanding of effort and success. Findings demonstrate that storybooks highlighting effort are associated with growth mindset, attribution of success to hard work, and increased persistence. Caregiver language echoed language from the assigned storybook, showing the importance of reading storybooks emphasizing hard work.

Explaining and exploring the dynamics of parent-child interactions and children's causal reasoning at a children's museum exhibit

This study examines how parents' and children's explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors support children's causal reasoning at a museum in San Jose, CA in 2017. One-hundred-nine parent-child dyads (3-6 years; 56 girls, 53 boys; 32 White, 9 Latino/Hispanic, 17 Asian-American, 17 South Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 26 mixed ethnicity, 7 unreported) played at an air flow exhibit with a nonobvious causal mechanism. Children's causal reasoning was probed afterward. The timing of parents' explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors was related to children's systematic exploration during play. Children's exploratory behavior, and parents' goal setting during play, were related to children's subsequent causal reasoning. These findings support the hypothesis that children's exploration is related to both internal learning processes and external social scaffolding.

The personal epistemology of parents predicts the development of scientific reasoning in children aged 6-10 years

The influence of the epistemological beliefs of parents on the development of comprehensive scientific reasoning abilities was investigated in a five-wave longitudinal study from kindergarten to elementary school. The 161 German 5-10-year-olds (89 girls, 72 boys) were assessed yearly on their scientific reasoning abilities using comprehensive measures for experimentation and data-interpretation skills, as well as understanding of the nature of science. The children were also tested on their language abilities and intelligence. Their parents completed a sociodemographics questionnaire and answered ten questions about their epistemological beliefs regarding (1) the interpretive nature of science, (2) the tentative nature of knowledge, and (3) the role of scientific framework theories. The personal epistemology of the parents significantly predicted the scientific reasoning development of their children regardless of the parents' education level and the children's general cognitive abilities. However, the effect of the epistemology of parents on their children's scientific reasoning was limited to the intercepts, suggesting that the epistemic understanding of parents affects how scientific reasoning develops in their children, but not the development speed. Although parental epistemology exerts substantial effects on scientific reasoning of their children, it did not affect their reading ability, suggesting an involvement of science-specific mechanisms rather than generalized family-based influences. These findings highlight the importance of family as a variable in the development of scientific reasoning, which is an area lacking in research, and it suggests that early interventions targeted at the epistemic understanding of caregivers can provide useful ways for promoting the reasoning of children. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A five-year longitudinal study shows significant development of scientific reasoning from kindergarten to elementary school. Caregivers' personal epistemology predicted scientific reasoning development-independent of children's general cognitive abilities and caregivers' level of education. The effect was most-pronounced for caregivers' understanding that social framework theories determine which aspects of science are accepted and how they are conducted. Caregivers' personal epistemology did not predict children's reading abilities, suggesting that the effect of the caregivers' epistemology on children's scientific reasoning is domain-specific.

Our business, not the robot's: family conversations about privacy with social robots in the home

The targeted use of social robots for the family demands a better understanding of multiple stakeholders' privacy concerns, including those of parents and children. Through a co-learning workshop which introduced families to the functions and hypothetical use of social robots in the home, we present preliminary evidence from 6 families that exhibits how parents and children have different comfort levels with robots collecting and sharing information across different use contexts. Conversations and booklet answers reveal that parents adopted their child's decision in scenarios where they expect children to have more agency, such as in cases of homework completion or cleaning up toys, and when children proposed what their parents found to be acceptable reasoning for their decisions. Families expressed relief when they shared the same reasoning when coming to conclusive decisions, signifying an agreement of boundary management between the robot and the family. In cases where parents and children did not agree, they rejected a binary, either-or decision and opted for a third type of response, reflecting skepticism, uncertainty and/or compromise. Our work highlights the benefits of involving parents and children in child- and family-centered research, including parental abilities to provide cognitive scaffolding and personalize hypothetical scenarios for their children.

The development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior: Protocol for Wave 1 data collection with children and parents by the Developing Belief Network

The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.

The breadth and specificity of 18-month-old's infant-initiated interactions in naturalistic home settings

Infants actively initiate social interactions aiming to elicit different types of responses from other people. This study aimed to document a variety of communicative interactions initiated by 18-month-old Turkish infants from diverse SES (N = 43) with their caregivers in their natural home settings. The infant-initiated interactions such as use of deictic gestures (e.g., pointing, holdouts), action demonstrations, vocalizations, and non-specific play actions were coded from video recordings and classified into two categories as need-based and non-need-based. Need-based interactions were further classified as a) biological (e.g., feeding); b) socio-emotional (e.g., cuddling), and non-need-based interactions (i.e., communicative intentions) were coded as a) expressive, b) requestive; c) information/help-seeking; d) information-giving. Infant-initiated non-need-based (88%) interactions were more prevalent compared to need-based interactions (12%). Among the non-need-based interactions, 50% aimed at expressing or sharing attention or emotion, 26% aimed at requesting an object or an action, and 12% aimed at seeking information or help. Infant-initiated information-giving events were rare. We further investigated the effects of familial SES and infant sex, finding no effect of either on the number of infant-initiated interactions. These findings suggest that at 18 months, infants actively communicate with their social partners to fulfil their need-based and non-need-based motivations using a wide range of verbal and nonverbal behaviors, regardless of their sex and socio-economic background. This study thoroughly characterizes a wide and detailed range of infant-initiated spontaneous communicative bids in hard-to-access contexts (infants' daily lives at home) and with a traditionally underrepresented non-WEIRD population.

Coding social interactions in naturalistic settings: The taxonomy of dyadic conversation

Social interaction and conversation is an essential aspect of human behavior, yet existing methods for coding conversations are outdated, and often can only be used in contrived research settings. The Taxonomy of Dyadic Conversation (TDC) is a coding system designed to code dyadic interactions in natural settings by labeling the utterances and turns taken within an interaction using speech categories. The TDC was used to code child-caregiver and adult-adult conversations in a children's museum and during a public forum, respectively. Results supported hypotheses that predicted adult-adult interactions would contain more Declarative Statement and Acknowledgment utterances than child-caregiver interactions, while child-caregiver interactions contained fewer Conversational Turns, as well as more Command and Encouragement utterances. Results also indicated high levels of inter-rater reliability. The potential for additions and modifications to be applied to the standard TDC is discussed.

[Interactive and conversational experiences of visiting families in "Darwin, the exhibition, exploring species," at the Museo Trompo Mágico, Mexico]

We analyzed the conversational content and interactions of ten families, with the aim of understanding the learning experience of families in a scientific exhibition. As instrument of analysis, it was used a protocol combining theoretical and empirical aspects of interactivity. The results show that the families actively participated in the exhibition, observing and talking about the animals, asking questions, looking for answers and elaborating explanations based on scientific thinking. The adults acted as facilitators of learning and for this they were supported by information panels promoting the connection with previous experiences. Children show curiosity, emotions and behaviors that evidence their learning experiences and interest in scientific topics.

Google is Free: Moral Evaluations of Intergroup Curiosity

Two experiments investigated how evaluations of intergroup curiosity differed depending on whether people placed responsibility for their learning on themselves or on outgroup members. In Study 1, participants (n = 340; 51% White-American, 49% Black-American) evaluated White actors who were curious about Black culture and placed responsibility on outgroup members to teach versus on themselves to learn. Both Black and White participants rated the latter actors as more moral, and perceptions of effort mediated this effect. A follow-up preregistered study (n = 513; 75% White-American) asked whether perceptions of greater effort cause greater perceptions of moral goodness. Replicating Study 1, participants rated actors as more moral when they placed responsibility on themselves versus others. Participants also rated actors as more moral when they exerted high versus low effort. These results clarify when and why participants view curiosity as morally good and help to strengthen bridges between work on curiosity, moral cognition, and intergroup relations.

"It kinda has like a mind": Children's and parents' beliefs concerning viral disease transmission for COVID-19 and the common cold

How people reason about disease transmission is central to their commonsense theories, scientific literacy, and adherence to public health guidelines. This study provided an in-depth assessment of U.S. children's (ages 5-12, N = 180) and their parents' (N = 125) understanding of viral transmission of COVID-19 and the common cold, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary aim was to discover children's causal models of viral transmission, by asking them to predict and explain counter-intuitive outcomes (e.g., asymptomatic disease, symptom delay) and processes that cannot be directly observed (e.g., viral replication, how vaccines work). A secondary aim was to explore parental factors that might contribute to children's understanding. Although even the youngest children understood germs as disease-causing and were highly knowledgeable about certain behaviors that transmit or block viral disease (e.g., sneezing, mask-wearing), they generally failed to appreciate the processes that play out over time within the body. Overall, children appeared to rely on two competing mental models of viruses: one in which viruses operate strictly via mechanical processes (movement through space), and one in which viruses are small living creatures, able to grow in size and to move by themselves. These results suggest that distinct causal frameworks co-exist in children's understanding. A challenge for the future is how to teach children about illness as a biological process without also fostering inappropriate animism or anthropomorphism of viruses.

Interest, Mindsets and Engagement: Longitudinal Relations in Science Orientations for Adolescents in Informal Science Programs

Little is known about the factors that influence engagement for adolescents participating in informal youth science programs. This study examined longitudinal reciprocal associations between adolescents' science engagement, interest, and growth mindset. Participants were adolescents (M_age = 15.06, SD = 1.82 years, 66.8% female) from the UK (n = 168) and the US (n = 299). A cross lagged path analysis indicated that participants' science growth mindset at baseline was positively related to interest, and engagement at year 1, and science interest at year 1 was positively related to growth mindset at year 2. Additionally, girls had lower science growth mindsets than boys. This evidence suggests that informal programs may encourage positive STEM trajectories by fostering engagement, growth mindset and interest.

Exploring the role of "in the moment" and global caregiver and child factors in caregiver questioning during shared book viewing

Questions of high (vs. low) cognitive demand (CD), which encourage children to engage in abstract or critical thinking (e.g., problem solve, reason about cause-and-effect relations, make inferences), may drive relations between children's language exposure and early skills. The present study adopted a micro-analytic approach to examine caregivers' high-CD questioning with their preschool-aged children while viewing a wordless picture book (n = 121) and "in the moment" (e.g., interaction time, child responses) and global factors (e.g., caregiver education). The probability of caregivers' high-CD questioning increased with interaction time and caregiver education. Post-hoc exploratory analyses revealed that the relation between children's responses and caregivers' high-CD questioning depended on caregivers' perceptions of children's vocabulary skills. Specifically, the probability of caregivers' subsequent high-CD questioning was greater if their child did not respond previously and if caregivers perceived them to have high vocabulary skills. In contrast, caregivers' questioning remained relatively constant for responsive children across different vocabulary skills. Thus, caregivers may employ certain types of input during brief, informal learning interactions with their children by considering their own and their child's propensities and micro-level changes that occur during their conversations.

Toddlers' action learning and memory from active and observed instructions

From early in life, children learn to perform actions on the objects in their environments. Although children learn from observing others' actions, actively engaging with the material to be learned can be important for learning. This study tested whether instruction that included opportunities for children to be active supported toddlers' action learning. In a within-participants design, 46 22- to 26-month-old toddlers (average age = 23.3 months; 21 male) were introduced to target actions for which instruction was either active or observed (instruction order counterbalanced across children). During active instruction, toddlers were coached to perform a set of target actions. During observed instruction, toddlers saw a teacher perform the actions. Toddlers were then tested on their action learning and generalization. Surprisingly, action learning and generalization did not differ between instruction conditions. However, toddlers' cognitive maturity supported their learning from both types of instruction. One year later, children from the original sample were tested on their long-term memory for information learned from active and observed instructions. Of this sample, 26 children provided usable data for the follow-up memory task (average age = 36.7 months, range = 33-41; 12 male). Children demonstrated better memory for information learned from active instruction than for information learned from observed instruction (odds ratio = 5.23) 1 year after instruction. Active experience during instruction appears to be pivotal for supporting children's long-term memory.

Dinos and GoPros: Children's exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

Research in both laboratory and museum settings suggests that children's exploration and caregiver-child interaction relate to children's learning and engagement. Most of this work, however, takes a third-person perspective on children's exploration of a single activity or exhibit, and does not consider children's perspectives on their own exploration. In contrast, the current study recruited 6-to 10-year-olds (N = 52) to wear GoPro cameras, which recorded their first-person perspectives as they explored a dinosaur exhibition in a natural history museum. During a 10-min period, children were allowed to interact with 34 different exhibits, their caregivers and families, and museum staff however they wished. Following their exploration, children were asked to reflect on their exploration while watching the video they created and to report on whether they had learned anything. Children were rated as more engaged when they explored collaboratively with their caregivers. Children were more likely to report that they learned something when they were more engaged, and when they spent more time at exhibits that presented information didactically rather than being interactive. These results suggest that static exhibits have an important role to play in fostering learning experiences in museums, potentially because such exhibits allow for more caregiver-child interaction.

Parental responsiveness and children's trait epistemic curiosity

Curiosity, the desire to learn new information, has a powerful effect on children's learning. Parental interactions facilitate curiosity-driven behaviors in young children, such as self-exploration and question-asking, at a certain time. Furthermore, parenting quality predicts better academic outcomes. However, it is still unknown whether persistent parenting quality is related to children's trait epistemic curiosity (EC). The current study examined whether parenting practices, responsiveness, and demandingness are cross-sectionally related to the trait EC of children in different age groups (preschoolers, younger and older school-aged children). We adopted a shortened Japanese version of the parenting style questionnaire and modified the trait EC questionnaire in young children. A sample of 244 caregivers (87.37% mothers) of children (ages 3-12) was recruited through educational institutions in Japan and reported on their parenting practices and trait EC. All data analyses were performed using SPSS version 26. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to determine the explanatory variables for children's trait EC. Self-reported parental responsiveness significantly explained EC scores. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show a cross-sectional relationship between parental responsiveness and children's trait EC. Future research should clarify whether parental responsiveness in early childhood predicts children's EC later in life.

Predicting grade school scientific literacy from aspects of the early home science environment

Fostering scientific literacy has become an increasingly salient goal as evidence accumulates regarding the early emergence of foundational skills and knowledge in this domain, as well as their relation to long-term success and engagement. Despite the potential that the home context has for nurturing early scientific literacy, research specifying its role has been limited. In this longitudinal study, we examined associations between children's early science-related experiences at home and their subsequent scientific literacy. Following on our previous work, we specifically considered parent causal-explanatory talk, as well as the degree to which parents facilitate access to science-related materials and experiences. A group of 153 children from diverse backgrounds were evaluated across 5 annual waves of data collection from preschool entry (M _age = 3.41) through first grade (M _age = 7.92). Results demonstrate that parent invitations for children to explain causal phenomena had strong concurrent relations to scientific literacy but showed little relation to subsequent literacy. In contrast, the broader home science environment at preschool entry, particularly in the form of exposure to science-related activities, predicted scientific literacy over the next 4 years. The directionality and specificity of these relations were clarified through the inclusion of measures of cognitive and broader home experiences as controls in regression analyses. Overall, our investigation revealed that exposure to science-related input provided by parents has particularly powerful potential for shaping scientific literacy when children are very young. Implications for parent-focused interventions that promote science literacy are discussed.

The complex associations between scientific reasoning and advanced theory of mind

This 6-wave longitudinal study (2014-2018) of 161 German 5- to 10-year-olds from a midsized city and rural area in southern Germany (89 females, 72 males; predominantly White; mostly middle class) found that scientific-reasoning abilities first develop at 6 years. Abilities were highly stable, with the kindergarten score predicting 25% of end-of-elementary-school variance. Individual but not developmental differences were related to language abilities (0.39), mindreading skills (0.33), and parental education (0.36). In early elementary school, mindreading skills predicted scientific reasoning (0.15), but not vice versa; in late elementary school, bidirectional associations emerged (0.11-0.33). Our findings suggest that mindreading is a precursor for the development of scientific reasoning and that older children use scientific reasoning to revise their advanced theories of mind.

Parent–child interaction during a home STEM activity and children’s handwashing behaviors

We examined correlations between a home-based STEM activity illustrating the importance of soap use during handwashing and children’s (4-to 7-year-olds, N = 81, 42 girls, 39 boys) use of soap when washing their hands. Parents and children either participated in or watched the activity. Children reflected on the activity immediately afterward and a week later. Parent–child interaction during participation related to the frequency of unprompted soap use during handwashing, controlling for performance on other, related cognitive measures. Children whose parents were more goal-directed, and set goals for the interaction, were less likely to use soap spontaneously when handwashing in the subsequent week. The amount of causal knowledge children generated when they reflected on the experience immediately afterward also influenced whether children used soap when washing their hands. Reducing the autonomy children believe they have during a STEM-based activity potentially leads them to not engage in a behavior related to the activity on their own. Overall, these data suggest that parent–child interaction during STEM activities can influence the ways children encode and engage with those activities in their everyday lives. Given that the ways children wash their hands might mitigate the spread of disease, interventions that focus on providing children with the belief that STEM activities are for them might be broadly beneficial to society.

Contributions of causal reasoning to early scientific literacy

Although early causal reasoning has been studied extensively, inconsistency in the tasks used to assess it has clouded our understanding of its structure, development, and relevance to broader developmental outcomes. The current research attempted to bring clarity to these questions by exploring patterns of performance across several commonly used measures of causal reasoning, and their relation to scientific literacy, in a sample of 3- to 5-year-old children from diverse backgrounds (N = 153). A longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis revealed that some measures of causal reasoning (counterfactual reasoning, causal learning, and causal inference), but not all of them (tracking cause-effect associations and resolving confounded evidence), assess a unidimensional factor and that this resulting factor was relatively stable across time. A cross-lagged panel model analysis revealed associations between causal reasoning and scientific literacy across each age tested. Causal reasoning and scientific literacy related to each other concurrently, and each predicted the other in subsequent years. These relations could not be accounted for by children's broader cognitive skills. Implications for early STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) engagement and success are discussed.

Relations between children's exploration in a children's museum and their reflections about their exploration

We examined 6- to 9-year-olds' (N = 60, 35 girls, 34% White, 23% Hispanic, 2% Black/African American, 2% Asian/Asian American, 22% Mixed Ethnicity/Race, 17% Unavailable, collected April-September 2019 in Providence, RI, USA) first-person perspectives on their exploration of museum exhibits. We coded goal setting, goal completion, and behaviors that reflected changes to how goals were accomplished. Whether children played collaboratively related to how often they revised behaviors to accomplish goals (OR = 2.14). When asked to reflect on their play, older children related talk about goals with behavioral revisions, demonstrating that children develop the ability to reflect on their goals when they watch their behaviors change (OR = 1.23). We discuss how these results inform the development of metacognitive reflection on learning through exploration.

To What Extent Is General Intelligence Relevant to Causal Reasoning? A Developmental Study

To what extent general intelligence mechanisms are associated with causal thinking is unclear. There has been little work done experimentally to determine which developing cognitive capacities help to integrate causal knowledge into explicit systems. To investigate this neglected aspect of development, 138 children aged 5-11 studying at mainstream primary schools completed a battery of three intelligence tests: one investigating verbal ability (WASI vocabulary), another looking at verbal analogical (Verbal Analogies subset of the WRIT), and a third assessing non-verbal/fluid reasoning (WASI block design). Children were also interviewed over the course of three causal tasks (sinking, absorption, and solution), with the results showing that the developmental paths exhibited uneven profiles across the three causal phenomena. Children consistently found that explaining solution, where substances disappeared toward the end of the process, was more challenging. The confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the impact of cognitive ability factor in explicitly identifying causal relations was large. The proportion of the direct effect of general intelligence was 66% and it subsumed the variances of both verbal measures. Of this, 37% was the indirect effect of age. Fluid reasoning explained a further 28% of the variance, playing a unique role in causal explanation. The results suggested that, overall, cognitive abilities are substantially related to causal reasoning, but not entirely due to developmental differences in "g" during the age periods studied.

Deep Cross-Cultural Reconstruction Process in the Context of Cultural Potential: A Qualitative Study

Cross-cultural adaptation significantly impacts the development of individuals in different cultural environments. Because of art scholars' intense cultural intervention, their cross-cultural process-cultural reconstruction-significantly differs from that of other groups. However, there is insufficient research on their process. In this study, 29 contemporary Chinese artists living in Germany were interviewed. Grounded theory was used to propose a new ladder theory. We found that the cross-cultural reconstruction process includes two sub-processes and seven ladder-like stages containing the "driver-strategy-outcome" logic. Arguably, the ladder model provides a stronger explanation for the mechanism of art scholars' cross-cultural reconstruction process.

What Children and Adolescents Know and Need to Learn about Cancer

Despite cancer's devastating effects on health and longevity, and the critical role of health habits formed during childhood and adolescence in its prevention, children's knowledge of contributors to cancer is understudied. In this paper, the first developmental analysis of the literature, we outline relevant theoretical perspectives and three early emerging intuitions about illness evident among preschool children-contagion/germ, contamination, and unhealthy lifestyle theories-and then review research on elementary and secondary school students' awareness of risk factors for cancer in light of these early intuitive theories. Our analysis centers on the 16 studies we could locate, done in seven countries, that allowed calculating the percentages of children of different age groups who mentioned various risk factors in response to open-ended questions or endorsed them in response to structured questions. Awareness of primary known risk factors (led by smoking), lifestyle contributors, and personal factors (genetics and old age) increased with age, while contact myths decreased with age until adolescents began to show awareness of sexual contact as a contributor to certain cancers. In addition, the analysis revealed higher levels of awareness in response to structured questions than in response to open-ended questions; a glaring need for research asking young school-aged children about key risk factors and exploring not only their knowledge but their causal understanding; a need for attention to sociocultural influences; and connections between preschool children's intuitive theories of disease and older children's patterns of belief about cancer that can help guide school-based cancer education.

Parental praise and children's exploration: a virtual reality experiment

When children practice a new skill and fail, it is critical for them to explore new strategies to succeed. How can parents encourage children's exploration? Bridging insights from developmental psychology and the neuroscience of motor control, we examined the effects of parental praise on children's motor exploration. We theorize that modest praise can spark exploration. Unlike inflated praise, modest praise acknowledges children's performance, without setting a high standard for future performance. This may be reassuring to children with lower levels of self-esteem, who often doubt their ability. We conducted a novel virtual-reality experiment. Children (N = 202, ages 8-12) reported self-esteem and performed a virtual-reality 3D trajectory-matching task, with success/failure feedback after each trial. Children received modest praise ("You did well!"), inflated praise ("You did incredibly well!"), or no praise from their parent. We measured motor exploration as children's tendency to vary their movements following failure. Relative to no praise, modest praise-unlike inflated praise-encouraged exploration in children with lower levels of self-esteem. By contrast, modest praise discouraged exploration in children with higher levels of self-esteem. Effects were small yet robust. This experiment demonstrates that modest praise can spark exploration in children with lower levels of self-esteem.

"He Fell in and That's How He Became a Fossil!": Engagement With a Storytelling Exhibit Predicts Families' Explanatory Science Talk During a Museum Visit

Parent-child conversations in everyday interactions may set the stage for children's interest and understanding about science. Studies of family conversations in museums have found links to children's engagement and learning. Stories and narratives about science may spark children's interest in science topics. This study asks whether a museum exhibit that provides opportunities for families to create narratives might encourage families' explanatory science talk throughout the rest of the exhibit. The project focused on the potential impact of a hands-on story-telling exhibit, the “spin browser” embedded within a larger exhibition focused on fossilized mammoth bones—Mammoth Discovery! at Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. Participants were 83 families with children between 3 and 11 years (mean age 7 years). We coded families' narrative talk (telling stories about the living mammoth or the fossil discovery) and connecting talk (linking the story to other nearby exhibits) while families visited the spin browser, and we also coded families' explanatory science talk at the exhibits that contained authentic fossil bones and replica bones. The parents in families who visited the spin browser (n = 37) were more likely to engage in science talk at the fossil exhibits than those in families who did not visit the spin browser (n = 46). Further, a regression analysis showed that family science talk at the fossil exhibits was predicted by parents' connections talk and children's narrative talk at the spin browser. These findings suggest that families' narratives and stories may provide an entry point for science-related talk, and encourage future study about specific links between storytelling and science understanding.

The Community-Engaged Lab: A Case-Study Introduction for Developmental Science

Due to the closing of campuses, museums, and other public spaces during the pandemic, the typical avenues for recruitment, partnership, and dissemination are now unavailable to developmental labs. In this paper, we show how a shift in perspective has impacted our lab's ability to successfully transition to virtual work during the COVID-19 shut-down. This begins by recognizing that any lab that relies on local communities to engage in human research is itself a community organization. From this, we introduce a community-engaged lab model, and explain how it works using our own activities during the pandemic as an example. To begin, we introduce the vocabulary of mission-driven community organizations and show how we applied the key ideas of mission, vision, and culture to discussions of our own lab's identity. We contrast the community-engaged lab model with a traditional bi-directional model of recruitment from and dissemination to communities and describe how the community-engaged model can be used to reframe these and other ordinary lab activities. Our activities during the pandemic serve as a case study: we formed new community partnerships, engaged with child “citizen-scientists” in online research, and opened new avenues of virtual programming. One year later, we see modest but quantifiable impact of this approach: a return to pre-pandemic diversity in our samples, new engagement opportunities for trainees, and new sustainable partnerships. We end by discussing the promise and limitations of the community-engaged lab model for the future of developmental research.

"When will it be over?" U.S. children's questions and parents' responses about the COVID-19 pandemic

Parent-child conversations are important for children's cognitive development, children's ability to cope with stressful events, and can shape children's beliefs about the causes of illness. In the context of a global pandemic, families have faced a multitude of challenges, including changes to their routines, that they need to convey to their children. Thus, parent-child conversations about the coronavirus pandemic might convey information about the causes of illness, but also about how and why it is necessary for children to modify their behaviors to comply with new social norms and medical guidance. The main goal of this study was to examine the questions children ask about the COVID-19 pandemic and how parents answer them. This survey included responses from a national sample of 349 predominantly white parents of children between the ages of 3 and 12 recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk in United States. Parents reported that although children asked about COVID-19 and its causes (17.3%), children asked primarily about lifestyle changes that occurred as a result of the pandemic (24.0%) and safety (18.4%). Parents reported answering these questions by emphasizing that the purpose of different preventative measures was to protect the child (11.8%) or the family (42.7%) and providing reassurance (13.3%). Many parents discussed how it was their social responsibility to slow the spread of the virus (38.4%). Parents of younger children tended to shield them from information about COVID-19 (p = .038), while parents with more knowledge were more likely to provide explanations (p < .001). Our analysis shows that families not only discuss information about the virus but also information about changes to their lifestyle, preventative measures, and social norms.

Tinkering With Testing: Understanding How Museum Program Design Advances Engineering Learning Opportunities for Children

Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5-11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children's museum during one of three iterations of a program posing an engineering design challenge. Children's narrative reflections about their experience were recorded immediately after tinkering. Across iterations of the program, changes to the exhibit design and facilitation provided by museum staff corresponded to increased families' engagement in key engineering practices. In the latter two cycles of the program, families engaged in the most testing, and in turn, redesigning. Further, in the latter cycles, the more children engaged in testing and retesting during tinkering, the more their narratives contained engineering-related content. The results advance understanding and the evidence base for educational practices that can promote engineering learning opportunities for children.

Directive Guidance as a Cultural Practice for Learning by Chinese-Heritage Babies

We provide a framework of analysis for Chinese ways of learning that extends beyond the individual level. The theoretical framework focuses on Confucian principles of <i>xiào</i> (孝, filial piety), <i>guăn</i> (管, to govern), and <i>dào dé guān</i> (道德觀, virtues), which leads us to argue that directive guidance as a cultural practice nourishes Chinese-heritage children’s learning as early as in infancy. To illustrate how directive guidance occurs in action for infants, we present an empirical study that examined the interaction of mother-infant dyads in Taipei, Taiwan, when they played with a challenging toy. The dyads co-enacted directive guidance more frequently than their European-American counterparts in the USA – through hand holding, intervening, and collaboration – while infants actively participate in the practice. We discuss the early development of strengths for learning that is fostered through culturally meaningful practices recurrent in parent-infant interaction.

Everyday interactions support toddlers' learning of conventional actions on artifacts

Children learn to perform actions on artifacts in their environments from infancy, but the ways caregivers support this learning during everyday interactions are relatively unexplored. This study investigated how naturalistic caregiver-child teaching interactions promoted conventional action learning in toddlers. Caregivers of 32 24- to 26-month-old children taught their children to perform novel target actions on toys. Afterward, an experimenter blind to the toys children had been taught tested children's action learning. Results indicated that children's propensities to assemble objects and vocabularies were positively associated with learning. Whereas caregivers' speech did not directly support learning, caregivers' action performance negatively related to children's learning. Importantly, children's own actions related to learning: Children who performed proportionally more actions relative to their caregivers with higher action accuracy demonstrated better learning of the taught material. Thus, children who "drove" the teaching session and were more accurate in their actions learned more. Caregivers contributed by supporting their children's actions: Caregivers who provided more specific instructions and praise had children who were more active during instruction. Importantly, analyses controlled for child-level individual differences, showing that beyond children's own skills, active experience supported by caregiver guidance related to conventional action learning. These findings highlight children as central agents in the learning process and suggest that caregivers contributed by coaching children's actions.

Components and Mechanisms: How Children Talk About Machines in Museum Exhibits

The current investigation examines children's (N = 61; 4- to 8-year old) learning about a novel machine in a local history museum. Parent-child dyads were audio-recorded as they navigated an exhibit that contained a novel artifact: a coffee grinder from the turn of the 20th century. Prior to entering the exhibit, children were randomly assigned to receive an experimental "component" prompt that focused their attention on the machine's internal mechanisms or a control "history" prompt. First, we audio-recorded children and their caregivers while they freely explored the exhibit, and then, we measured children's learning by asking them two questions in a test phase. Children of all ages, regardless of the prompt given, discussed most aspects of the machine, including the whole machine, its parts, and, to a lesser extent, its mechanisms. In the test phase, older children recalled more information than younger children about all aspects of the machine and appeared more knowledgeable to adult coders. Overall, this suggests that children of all ages were motivated to discuss all aspects of a machine, but some scaffolding may be necessary to help the youngest children take full advantage of these learning opportunities. While the prompts did not significantly influence the number of children who discussed the machine's mechanisms, children who received the component prompt were rated as more knowledgeable about the machine in the test phase, suggesting that this prompt influenced what they learned. Implications for visitor experience and exhibit design are discussed.

Motivation for the Family Visit and On-the-Spot Activities Shape Children's Learning Experience in a Science Center

Children’s learning often happens in the interactions with more knowledgeable members of the society, frequently parents, as stated by the sociocultural theory. Parent-child conversations provide children with a new understanding and foster knowledge development, especially in informal learning contexts. However, the family conversations in museums and science centers can be contingent on the motivation for the family visit or the activities organized on the spot. In order to establish how family motivation and on-the-spot activities influence children’s informal learning experience, the present study was carried out in a family science center. The study focused on children’s learning experience in a hands-on exhibit featuring objects that allow for the exploration of the concepts of sound waves and light. Thirty-nine 7–10-year-old children (21 boys and 18 girls) and their families participated in the study. Twenty families received a worksheet to prompt an experimentation activity with one of the light exhibits. Motivation for the family visit was probed at the end of the visit. The target children of the families wore a GoPro HERO 5 camera attached to a chest harness throughout their visit. The video was coded for family interaction and experimentation with the light exhibit. Family conversations were coded for open-ended questions, responses to open-ended questions, explanations, associations, attention directing, and reading signage aloud. Family motivation for the visit was related to the quality of family conversation during the visit. The experimentation activity prompt did not affect the likelihood of noticing and engaging with the particular exhibit. At the same time, it did affect the quality of engagement: children who received the experimentation activity prompt were more likely to explore the effects the exhibit provided and experiment rather than play with the exhibit. Family motivation and on-the-spot activities are discussed as two possible factors to influence children’s learning experience in science centers.

Understanding Parents' Roles in Children's Learning and Engagement in Informal Science Learning Sites

Informal science learning sites (ISLS) create opportunities for children to learn about science outside of the classroom. This study analyzed children's learning behaviors in ISLS using video recordings of family visits to a zoo, children's museum, or aquarium. Furthermore, parent behaviors, features of the exhibits and the presence of an educator were also examined in relation to children's behaviors. Participants included 63 children (60.3% female) and 44 parents in 31 family groups. Results showed that parents' science questions and explanations were positively related to children observing the exhibit. Parents' science explanations were also negatively related to children's science explanations. Furthermore, children were more likely to provide science explanations when the exhibit was not interactive. Lastly there were no differences in children's behaviors based on whether an educator was present at the exhibit. This study provides further evidence that children's interactions with others and their environment are important for children's learning behaviors.

Designing Exhibits to Support Relational Learning in a Science Museum

Science museums aim to provide educational experiences for both children and adults. To achieve this goal, museum displays must convey scientifically-relevant relationships, such as the similarities that unite members of a natural category, and the connections between scientific models and observable objects and events. In this paper, we explore how research on comparison could be leveraged to support learning about such relationships. We describe how museum displays could promote educationally-relevant comparisons involving natural specimens and scientific models. We also discuss how these comparisons could be supported through the design of a display—in particular, by using similarity, space, and language to facilitate relational thinking for children and their adult companions. Such supports may be pivotal given the informal nature of learning in museums.

Effects of Facilitation vs. Exhibit Labels on Caregiver-Child Interactions at a Museum Exhibit

In museum settings, caregivers support children's learning as they explore and interact with exhibits. Museums have developed exhibit design and facilitation strategies for promoting families' exploration and inquiry, but these strategies have rarely been contrasted. The goal of the current study was to investigate how prompts offered through staff facilitation vs. labels printed on exhibit components affected how family groups explored a circuit blocks exhibit, particularly whether children set and worked toward their own goals, and how caregivers were involved in children's play. We compared whether children, their caregivers, or both set goals as they played together, and the actions they each took to connect the circuits. We found little difference in how families set goals between the two conditions, but did find significant differences in caregivers' actions, with caregivers in the facilitation condition making fewer actions to connect circuits while using the exhibit, compared to caregivers in the exhibit labels condition. The findings suggest that facilitated and written prompts shape the quality of caregiver-child interactions in distinct ways.

Young children's metacognitive awareness of confounded evidence

Young children selectively explore confounded evidence-when causality is ambiguous due to multiple candidate causes. This suggests that they have an implicit understanding that confounded evidence is uninformative. This study examined explicit understanding, or metacognitive awareness, of the informativeness of different qualities of evidence during early childhood. In two within-participants conditions, children (N = 60 5- and 6-year-olds) were presented with confounded and unconfounded evidence and were asked to evaluate and explain their knowledge of a causal relation. Children more frequently requested further information in the confounded condition than in the unconfounded condition. Nearly half of them referred to multiple candidate causes when explaining confounded evidence. Our data demonstrate that young children can reason explicitly about the informativeness of different kinds of evidence.

Developing an Understanding of Science

Young children are adept at several types of scientific reasoning, yet older children and adults have difficulty mastering formal scientific ideas and practices. Why do “little scientists” often become scientifically illiterate adults? We address this question by examining the role of intuition in learning science, both as a body of knowledge and as a method of inquiry. Intuition supports children's understanding of everyday phenomena but conflicts with their ability to learn physical and biological concepts that defy firsthand observation, such as molecules, forces, genes, and germs. Likewise, intuition supports children's causal learning but provides little guidance on how to navigate higher-order constraints on scientific induction, such as the control of variables or the coordination of theory and data. We characterize the foundations of children's intuitive understanding of the natural world, as well as the conceptual scaffolds needed to bridge these intuitions with formal science.