Our Studies
WHERE LEARNING MEETS FUN
Across our labs, we have dozens of studies for kids between the ages of one and nine years.
Currently, all of our research studies take place over Zoom from the comfort of your own home!
Questions? Email us at devlabs@berkeley.edu
The Illuminating the Brain Consortium, led by Professors Silvia Bunge, Fei Xu, and Keanan Joyner, seeks to shed light on childrens’ thought processes by measuring brain activity from a head cap with a safe method called near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Please stay tuned! For more information, please contact Professor Silvia Bunge: sbunge@berkeley.edu
Belief Revision
8-12 mo. & 4-6 yrs.
A 30 minute Zoom session where children will see how objects move, and answer questions about what they believe about the objects.
Parenting during COVID-19
18-28 mo.
This study is designed to look at parents’ and children’s day-to-day routines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Help us learn how to support families like you by taking audio recordings of your child’s bath routine and completing short <5 minute surveys each day for 30 days. You will receive $60 for 30 days of participation.
Disagreement Study
4-10 yrs.
We are interested in whether children adjust their beliefs based on which of the two beliefs is supported by more evidence. In a fifteen minute Zoom game, we investigate children’s developing ability to selectively adjust their beliefs when confronted with a disagreeing peer.
Intergalactic Dance Party
4-5 yrs.
In this 15-minute study, your child will see various social interactions between aliens at an intergalactic party. Then, they will be asked to make predictions about the types of social interactions that they think will happen next.
Non-Literal Language
4-5 yrs.
In this 5-minute study, your child will hear a story about a person who uses language in a creative, non-literal way. By answering multiple choice questions, your child will try to interpret what object the person is referring to when they use language in this creative way.
Language and Analogy
4-5 yrs.
In this 10-minute study, your child will hear a story about an alien who wants to learn about different objects on earth. Two teachers will give the alien different information, and your child will choose which teacher they think the alien should learn from.
The CHANGE Game!
3-5 yrs.
In this fun 10-minute game, children will see some animations and then predict what will happen next. In this study, we're trying to learn: How do children generalize from past experiences to imagine new possibilities?
Object Property 4-7 yrs.
For this study, we are interested in how children interpret sentences that say something about objects (e.g. the house is red). The study takes about 15 minutes during which we would be playing a game where your child would be asked to choose between two different phrases about an object (e.g what about the house is red?)
The Belief Task
5-8 yrs.
For this study, we are interested in how children think about and form beliefs. In a 30 minute zoom session, children will listen to a story and later answer questions about the story.
The EXPLORATION Game!
5-8 yrs.
In this 20-minute game, you will play two fun games: one game to play with monsters and another game with a fun virtual machine. At the end, you will get to watch fun videos of baby animals!
Alien Adventure
4-7 yrs.
In this 15-minute game, our child will meet aliens who travel through space, land on different planets and sometimes make sparks with their antennas. We will count the sparks together, make guesses about what will happen on new planets, and try to make a spark to help a stranded astronaut recharge her spaceship.
Adjectives Task
5.5-7 yrs.
Our study investigates whether or not bilingual children are more likely to be able to understand and acknowledge that two people can disagree about a subjective property. In an hour Zoom session, we explore children’s linguistic subjectivity, metalinguistic, and executive function abilities.
Coming
Check back soon!
Studies
Check back soon!
The Illuminating the Brain Consortium
The Illuminating the Brain Consortium, led by Professors Silvia Bunge, Fei Xu, and Keanan Joyner, seeks to shed light on childrens’ thought processes by measuring brain activity from a head cap with a safe method called near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Please stay tuned! For more information, please contact Professor Silvia Bunge: sbunge@berkeley.edu
Modal Verb Task
6-9 yrs.
This fifteen minute Zoom study researches the development of children’s ability to map epistemic modal verbs (i.e. verbs like can and should that indicate a speaker’s beliefs about events in the world) to probabilistic situations and what the nature of this mapping is.
UC Berkeley Developmental Labs
2121 Berkeley Way West
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94704
