Research

Parents and their children can participate in any of the studies currently running in the ECDC.

Our research would not be possible without the generous support of parents with children and students who take part in our projects. If you are interested in participating with your child in our upcoming studies, please enter your details below, and we will be in touch with you when a study becomes available within the age of your child.

Register your interest to be contacted for future research studies.

(2½ - 5 years): How children learn the cardinality principle of counting

Name of Researcher: Kate Macklin

Age of children required: 2½ - 5 years

Description of study:

This study investigates young children’s ability to learn abstract counting principles, which is regarded as a central element of their cognitive development. For this study, we are specifically interested in the principle of ‘cardinality’, where children learn that the final number value in a group or array of items is the total number. Children will play a series of games on investigating their performance on cardinality and working memory using an iPad and a puppet. This study addresses exciting new questions about the cognitive abilities of typically developing children and help us better understand how monolingual and bilingual children may differ in their acquisition of abstract counting principles.

Additional information: This study takes approximately 20 minutes to complete, and you will be with your child at all times. If you and your child would like to participate, or you have any further questions, please email Kate (kate.macklin@uq.net.au).

(3 - 5 years): Search task strategy and delayed search

Name of Researcher: Ania Ganowicz

Age of children required: 3 to 5 years

Description of Study: Neurons called concept cells were recently discovered in the human brain. These cells play a role in representing abstract concepts and may influence the understanding of context-dependent elements of the environment. The development of abstract representations and context-dependent learning in children to date, remains under-researched. Similarly, studies on search tasks where the hiding of the object is made invisible to the child and there is a time delay, have only been conducted on 2-year-old children. Children's self-indicating behaviour related to these search tasks is also overlooked.

Children will be asked to solve context-dependent search tasks across two rooms consisting of coloured cups and stickers. The second part of the experiment consists of a search task where the target is hidden in an invisible way using an array of boxes and including a time delay. While children will be solving this task, we will look at their self-indicating behaviour.

This study will benefit our understanding of how children represent the surrounding world in their mind in relation to context as well as understand the permanence of objects and make use of self-indicating behaviour. The results will provide the basis for further research that could lead to a greater insight for parents into problem solving, attaining to details and strategic use of self-indicating by young children.

Additional Information: This experiment takes approximately 30-35 minutes to complete. You will never be separated from your child. If you would like to participate or have any questions about the study, please send me an email (a.ganowicz@uqconnect.edu.au)

(3 - 6 years): Children’s trust and learning from social robots

Name of Researcher: Kristyn Sommer

Age of children required: 3 - 6 years

Description of Study: The purpose of this study is to understand how children trust and learn from social robots compared to humans. This study investigates how children view robots as sources of information, and in particular, how they evaluate information when it comes from a robot compared to a human. Learning from others involves not just an evaluation of the information being provided, but also who is providing the information. As such, as technology continues to become integrated into our everyday lives, understanding how different sources of information contribute to children’s understanding of information is critical.

Additional information: Participation in this study involves one consent survey and one experimental survey, both of which you can complete in your own time. It is estimated that together both surveys will take around 20 minutes to complete with your child. If you would like to participate or have any questions about the study, please send me an email (k.sommer@uq.edu.au)

(3 - 7 years): Sibling influence on development of children with autism spectrum disorder

Name of researchers: Professor Virginia Slaughter and Kendall Wall

Age of children required: 3 - 7 years

Description of the study: This Australian Research Council project aims to learn whether and how typically-developing (TD) siblings affect development of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD involves difficulties with language, executive functions and social understanding. For TD children, growing up with siblings gives an advantage in these cognitive functions. Yet little is known about how having siblings impacts on cognitive development of children with ASD. This study will explore longitudinally the mechanisms of sibling impact in families with and without a child with ASD. This project will create a deeper understanding of sibling processes in families with a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – knowledge that may contribute to effective, evidence-based interventions to support families.

Additional information: If there are any further questions about this study please email Kendall Wall (k.wall@uqconnect.edu.au)

(3 - 8 years): Reminder setting

Name of researcher: Kristy Armitage

Age of children required: 3 - 8 years

Description of the study: Humans often behave in ways that simplify difficult tasks. For example, we write shopping lists and use calendars rather than relying on our memories, reach for calculators when solving mathematical problems and depend on GPS systems when finding our way home. In my PhD, I explore how humans use and modify their external world to increase the efficiency of their thinking, which is referred to as cognitive offloading. So far, there is very little knowledge about how this ability develops in children.

In this task, I am interested in whether children spontaneously begin engaging in offloading behaviours if doing so will prevent a failure in the future. More specifically, the task involves hiding a reward in one of three identical containers, and then shuffling the containers out of the children’s sight, preventing them from visually tracking the location of the reward. Children therefore have no indication of where the reward was hidden and must simply guess the answer. I then teach children a way that they can set reminders about the location of the rewards to avoid having to guess the answer and am interested in both their use of the demonstrated strategy and their ability to transfer this logic into other novel reminder setting behaviours.

Additional information: This study takes approximately 15 minutes to complete, and you will be with your child at all times. If you and your child are interested in participating or have any further questions, please contact me at kristy.armitage@uq.net.au

(4 - 6 years): Tower building : Imitation and innovation

Name of Researcher: Mingxuan Zhao

Age of children required: 4-6 years old

Description of Study:

By paying very close attention to the specific actions used rather than just focusing on the outcomes produced, humans have a unique approach to learning from others. This has led to our children being labelled 'culture magnets', quickly able to adopt the specific behaviours of those around them. However, we don’t know how strong this drive to imitate is. Will children forsake a conventional way of doing things that leads to little personal gain in favour of one that maximises their material rewards? The aim of this project is to answer this question.

Children will watch several pre-recorded demonstrations of individuals building a platform using marshmallows and sticks. After watching, children will be given chances to play with their own set of similar materials. We are interested to see if they copy the demonstration or ignore it in favour of collecting as many marshmallows as they can.

Additional Information:

The marshmallows used are taken from a freshly opened bag for each child, and at the end of the session children are given the bag to take home (so you get to decide when and how many they eat). The experiment takes no more than 20 minutes, and you will never be separated from your child. If there are any further questions about this study please email Mingxuan Zhao (mingxuan.zhao@uq.edu.au).

(4 - 7 years): Children’s recognition of future utility through stories

Name of Researcher: Zoe Ockerby

Age range of children required for this study: 4 to 7 years

Description of study: This study investigates young children’s ability to recognise objects that will be useful to them in the future. This recognition of future utility is considered to be an underlying component of our ability to innovate. Adults continually demonstrate this ability, from recognising solutions which solve everyday problems, to creating world changing innovations, however it is less clear when this recognition develops in children.

To investigate this, children will watch a short story on an iPad. In the story, a character will have a problem they need to solve and will then encounter a solution to their problem. Children will be asked questions during the story and we’re interested to see if children can identify the solution to the character’s problem. After this, children will listen to, and answer questions about several more shorter stories which are about acting in the present to achieve a future goal. We are interested to see if children can identify actions capable of achieving these goals, and whether their responses to these stories are related to their decision-making in the first story.

Additional information: This study takes approximately 10-mintues to complete, and you will be with your child at all times. If you and your child would like to participate, or you have any further questions, you can contact me via email (zoe.ockerby@uq.net.au)

(6 - 11 years) Children’s judgements of other’s misbehaviour

Name of Researcher: Sophie Cameron

Age of children required: 6 to 11 years

Description of Study: Adults judgements of the behaviour of other’s is often affected by that person’s previous behaviour. This is highlighted in the fact that in criminal cases someone with a criminal history is often given a harsher punishment then a first-time offender. Studies have also shown that adults rate every day offences as worse when they’re performed by someone with a history of distasteful behaviour, compared to someone with a more moral history. What is unknown, is when children begin to think like this.To investigate this, children are told stories about a series of characters. Some are described as always good, some are always bad, and some are in between. Each character then does something wrong, like not sharing fairly. We then ask the children to rate the ‘badness’ of the act. We are interested in when children begin to make a similar judgement pattern to adults, by rating the acts performed by the ‘bad’ children as worse.

Additional Information: The experiment takes no more than 10 minutes, and you will never be separated from your child. If there are any further questions about this study please email Sophie Cameron (sophie.cameron@uq.edu.au)

(7 - 17 years): Self-reference effect

Name of researcher: Harrison Paff

Age of children required: 7 - 17 years

Description of the study: This study investigates how children perceive objects that are to them, and how that development is linked with their self-representation. In our society, it is important to understand who owns which items, and what barriers lie between us and others. We think that as children grow they are developing a sense of self and that their interaction with objects that belong to them changes as they age. Your child will complete a computer-based task, where they are required to interact with items on a computer screen and will use the mouse to move and sort the objects as instructed.

Additional information: The experiment takes approximately 30 - 45 minutes to complete. You will never be separated from your child for the duration of the experiment. If there are any further questions about this study please email Harrison Paff (h.paff@uq.edu.au).

(8 - 12 years): Feelings for deliberate practice

Name of researcher: Dr Kana Imuta and Camila Franco

Age of children required: 8 - 12 years

Description of the study: In this study, we are investigating ways in which we can increase children’s motivation to practise skills. Practice is fundamental to expertise in various endeavours and children who are motivated to practice from a young age are likely to have an advantage for their learning as well as success in later life. Your child will be presented with a range of motor-skill games and we are interested in whether children are motivated to practice the games without any prompting. Your child will be asked to play alone in a room for up to 5 min and during this time you can watch your child through a one-way mirror. We include a bell in the room, which your child can use to call us back at any time. Aside from this 5-min period, you can remain with your child throughout the study.

Additional information: Participation involves one 25-min session. If you would like to participate or have any questions about the study, please email Camila Franco (c.franco@uq.net.au).