Alien Greenhouse: Pick the lights that make the flowers bloom!

For 4-year-olds to 6-year-olds

In this study, you and your child will see six stories involving lights that make Alien flowers bloom. Each time, you and your child will listen to the story and then make a guess about what happened! This study is only for children who have not done any of our other Alien Greenhouse studies 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!

Previous research suggests that children use features like color, shape, or number to learn about what makes objects different from each other. Now, we are studying whether children can do the same thing to make predictions - do patterns in a cause (a light shining on a flower) match patterns in the effect (how do the flowers bloom)? We think the specific kinds of patterns (or functions) that kids pay attention to may tell us something about how both kids and adults break down patterns of cause and effect in the real world.

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 Alien Greenhouse studies, (4) you need to submit a valid consent statement (you and your child need to be visible in the consent video).