Which seeds grew the flowers?

For 4- to 6-year-olds

In this study, you and your child will go through a narrated story book with eight short stories. For each story, your child will see groups of seeds in an alien garden, and try to predict what flowers the seeds will become. Please note that this study requires your child to point to their answer (if they cannot yet click the answer), otherwise you can click for them. There are no right or wrong answers -- we just want to know how children of this age think! This study is only for children who have not done any of our other matching studies with flowers and seeds before. If you select your child from the pulldown list you will get a red text warning if they have done one before (or are otherwise not eligible, for example by being too old). If you don’t see a warning, your child is eligible!

Children have an amazing ability to learn about why and how things happen. Understanding the relationships between causes and effects sets the foundation for much of this learning. Previous research suggests that children use features like color, shape, or number to categorize objects and learn conceptual boundaries. Here we explore if children use similar features in combination with their background knowledge to identify the underlying structure of causes and effects. For instance, in this study we want to know if children use the underlying structure of a plot of flowers to infer the seeds the flowers grew from.

15 minutes

You can only participate in this study once for compensation. After you participate, we’ll email you a $5 Amazon gift card from Amazon.com (via a code that can be entered online) within ten days to thank you for your time. To be eligible for the gift card, (1) Your child must be in the age range for the study, (2) English is (one of) your child's first language(s), (3) your child can NOT have participated in other matching studies comparing plots of flowers and seeds, (4) you need to submit a valid consent statement (you and your child need to be visible in the consent video), and (5) your child must be in the video recording to ensure there is no guardian interference.