Once Upon a Germ

For 4-5 year old, English-speaking children

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you.
In this study, your child will watch and listen to one of two narrated storybooks about a scientific concept and answer questions about the story to see how much they learned. Then, children will answer a lot of different science questions, some of them will be related to the book they saw and some will not.  Sometimes your child will need to provide a spoken response to a question, and sometimes they will choose between options presented on the screen.

In this study we will use stories to teach scientific concepts and determine if they are effective for generalizing learning beyond the story and for promoting adaptive health behavior.  Although young children have some knowledge of illness risk behaviors and contaminants like germs, children do not usually demonstrate a complete causal understanding of illness transmission until middle childhood. Children in this study will listen to one of three different storybooks about scientific concepts: some of the stories are related to contagion, and some are not. As a result, we can determine how the content of the different books is effective for helping children learn to causally reason about scientific information. This research will help us target successful educational interventions to be implemented at schools and at home for very young children.

25-30 minutes

You will receive a $5 (USD) Amazon.com gift card for your participation within 1 week (only one gift card per child after verification that child is within age range of the study and can be clearly seen on camera).