Current Projects
We are currently pursuing several lines of investigation in the Child Development Lab. The projects described here span two continents and a range of ages! If you have questions about any of these studies, or if you are interested in participation, please contact Dr. Krista Casler or lab assistant Treysi Terziyan.
Scroll down the page to read about each study, or click on the titles provided here to jump directly to a particular study.
The Puppet Study: Assumptions of Normativity in Children's Assignment of Functions
Preschoolers' Learning about Artifacts: Mutual Exclusivity for Tools?
Teleo-Functional Reasoning Among Romanian Roma (Gypsies)
Adults' Theories of Children's Minds
2007 Senior Projects:
Martyna Galazka: Toddlers' Learning about False Beliefs
Kerry Whiteman: Theory of Mind in Autistic and Typically Developing Children
The Puppet Study: Assumptions of Normativity in Children's Assignment of Functions
This project is for young 2s, young 3s, and young 4s. We’re interested in understanding whether young children grasp -- and thus expect adherence to -- the normative nature of artifact functions. That is, do toddlers merely mimic tool use or do they more specifically understand that a specific function is normatively "what one does" with an instrumental artifact? We know that older children and adults believe that tools have specialized functions; for example, adults think that forks are for eating, not for combing hair, even though a fork might function as a pretty good “comb” in a pinch! We’re trying to understand whether toddlers share these intuitions.
In this project, children observe an adult using several simple and interesting objects. Some of the objects will be familiar to the child (such as toothbrushes and keys) and others will be unusual new objects we have created (such as meedles and ribbers). Later, a friendly puppy puppet named Sam will come in and use these objects in unconventional ways; for example, Sam might use the toothbrush to paint. We're interested in children's responses to Sam's actions.
If you know of a child who has turned 2, 3, or 4 in the past several months, please contact us about participating in this project. We ideally will arrange for you to come to our lab, but we might be able to see your child at home or day care. The project itself is played like a game so kids tend to enjoy it, and they receive a small thank you gift at the end of the session.
If you come to us, you'll find our lab conveniently located right off of Old Harrisburg Pike, and we have a dedicated parking spot beside the building so parking is easy. If other siblings will be coming along, we can arrange to have a student play with the sibling(s) while your toddler is participating in the study session. Please contact us for more information!
Preschoolers’ Learning about Artifacts: Mutual Exclusivity for Tools?
This project is for children between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5. Previous projects with children this age have demonstrated that preschoolers already have very strong, adultlike notions of how to use human-made objects. They rapidly assign functions to objects on the basis of a single exposure – just like adults! We are interested in further exploring this ability. Is children’s performance based on “low-level” pragmatic constraints, such as expectations of what the experimenter wants? Or is it based in “higher-level” construals of the tools themselves, such that they believe objects truly have single, privileged functions?
To answer these questions, we teach preschoolers about novel tools that perform fun, novel tasks, such as ringing special bells and crushing crackers. We subsequently ask them to perform the tasks again, several times, and observe the patterns of their tool choices as they achieve the requested goals. We also have children color in some pictures; we're not evaluating their coloring but simply use this to break up the tool tasks. As with all of our projects, everything is played like a game, so children tend to enjoy their time with us. They receive a small thank you gift at the end of the session.
If you know of a child who falls in this age range, please contact us about participating in the project. We sometimes go to children’s preschools or homes for this project, but we also love to see kids in our lab space. The entire session takes under 30 minutes, and parents stay with their children at all times if tested in the lab.
Our lab is conveniently located right off of Old Harrisburg Pike, and we have a dedicated parking spot beside the building so parking is easy. If other siblings will be coming along, we can arrange to have a student play with the sibling(s) while your preschooler is participating in the study session. Please contact us for more information!
Teleo-Functional Reasoning Among Romanian Romani (Gypsy) Adults
“Teleo-functional” explanations account for objects in terms of purpose, helping us understand objects such as pencils (for writing) and body parts such as ears (for hearing). Western-educated adults restrict teleo-functional attributions to artifact, biological, and behavioral phenomena, considering these explanations less appropriate for nonliving natural entities. In contrast, children extend explanations of purpose to the nonliving natural domain, a tendency that has become known as "promiscuous teleology."
In May 2002 and again in March 2006, Dr. Casler traveled to beautiful central Romania to work with a group of Romani (Gypsy) adults. The cross-cultural study she conducted (in collaboration with Dr. Deb Kelemen from Boston University) explores whether eventual restrictions in children’s “promiscuous teleology” occur as a function of age and development, generally, or scientific literacy, more specifically.
Adults’ Theories of Children’s Minds
This preliminary investigation was launched in summer 2007. The guiding goal of the project is to explore how adults – and parents in particular – think about children’s minds. How do adults predict and explain children’s thoughts and expectations? Do adults understand preschoolers’ beliefs and desires? What do parents think about children’s tool use? The initial pilot study involved 25 parents and their 3-year-olds. Parents filled out a survey while the child participated in a range of corresponding projects. We are currently reviewing these data and will be initiating a follow-up project soon. Stay tuned!
Toddlers' Learning About False Beliefs
A senior independent research project by Martyna Galazka, awarded Honors in May 2007
ABSTRACT: False-belief tasks have been used as the measure of a child's ability to understand another's mental state. Originally, passing a false-belief task required a child to accurately determine what another person will think based on what that person knows. Failure on these tasks referred to the child's attributing to another person his own knowledge of the situation, rather than that person's. The present study investigated the influence of environment as a learning tool in understanding false belief. A simple hide and seek game was designed to measure children's understanding of false-belief when given a chance to learn from past experience. The participants were divided into two groups – first hiders and first seekers – that made one pair in a hide-and-seek situation. The results show an improvement among the first seekers group who had a chance to learn from the environment and employ the "like I was" thinking into interpreting their peer's current situation. The study shows promising results indicating possible environmental influence in understanding false-belief tasks. The implications of this influence are discussed.
Development of Theory of Mind in Autistic and Typically Developing Children
A senior independent research project by Kerry Whiteman, awarded Honors in May 2007
ABSTRACT: A preliminary investigation explored whether improvement over time in autistic children's Theory of Mind results from exposure to social experience or from delayed biological development. Literature on the biological and social nature of autism is reviewed. The study included 8 autistic children with varying degrees of social experience (operationalized as time spent in a socialization therapy) and 12 typically developing children. Their overall performance on a battery of Joint Attention and Theory of Mind tasks was compared. Additional analyses explored autistic children's improvement, utilizing parental estimation of Joint Attention and Theory of Mind abilities prior to the socialization therapy. Results suggest that social experience could be a more accurate predictor of Joint Attention skills than chronological or mental age alone.
