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Research Spotlight

The Research Spotlight section of the monthly newsletter is one way Children’s School parents can learn about research in progress.

Also, each time your child participates in a study that involves playing a “game” with a researcher (i.e., as opposed to merely being observed), he or she will get a participation sticker suggesting that you, “Ask me about the … game” and a study description detailing the task.

Feel free to contact Dr. Vales to discuss any questions you have about research.

This semester, we are hosting students from Dr. Erik Thiessen’s Developmental Research Methods course. This is an advanced Psychology course in which students have the opportunity to conduct two research projects at the Children’s School with Mrs. Stilinovich’s help. After completing their first project in February, the students have now started the second group project. Each group designed a study with Dr. Thiessen’s help and refined their study and procedures with my help prior to working with the children.

Students Nmachi Emelogu-Obioma, Riley Lawrence, Adrien Marenco, and Isaac Yankel are conducting the Button Buddies Game, with the goal of understanding how young children perceive emotions in musical sounds. In this game, children are asked to listen to short musical recordings. The buttons that play the recordings show either matching or mismatching facial expressions (happy, neutral, sad); for example, the major cord is paired with the happy facial expression in the matching condition and with the sad facial expression in the mismatching condition. In both conditions, the children are asked to sort the recordings from happiest to least happy after listening to them. If children associate musical sounds with emotions in the same way that adults do, the researchers should observe that the sorting is more accurate in the matching than in the mismatching condition.

The Sharing Game is being conducted by students Sydney Duncan-James, Marissa Fernandez, Andy Mann, and Solomon Wechter, with the goal of understanding if children learn prosocial behaviors more effectively from a story depicting a boy vs. a girl main character. In this game, children are asked how many crayons they would share between themselves and other fictional children – once before reading a sharing story and once after. The story depicts either a girl or a boy main character who shares a snack with a friend. By examining if the children share a similar or different number of crayons in each story condition, the researchers can see if the gender of the main character matters for increasing sharing behavior.

As always, if you have any questions about research, please let me know.

Stay curious!

Dr. Catarina Vales