Guess the Pattern on your tablet!

For 3- to 7- year olds

Materials you'll need for this study: (1) your computer, (2) your charged tablet, and (3) you and your child! While your session is being recorded through Children Helping Science, your child will complete a touchscreen task on a tablet. After seeing instructions on Children Helping Science, your child will complete a pattern by tapping on the screen where they think a star will move next. After that, your child will see 8 more patterns: after they watch a star move twice and hear a chime, your child is ready to guess where the star will move to next. For each pattern, this will happen 12 times.

How do young children make sense of patterns? Humans are uniquely skilled at recognizing and learning structure. We use this ability to learn languages, solve math problems, create music, follow recipes, and play games. Even very young children and infants show remarkable abilities: they can tell when one object moves behind another, notice when a sequence of items is shuffled, and even keep track of patterns in statistics. For example, when young children see a sequence of movements within an octagonal space, and are asked to continue it, they tend to favor patterns involving simple rotations or symmetry. But what happens when the patterns become more complex? Can children recognize and extend patterns like zigzags or spirals, even when there are no clear boundaries? Exploring how children handle these patterns might help us understand where abstract thought comes from.

15 minutes

After you participate, we will email you a $5 Amazon gift card (from Amazon.com) within a week from participation to thank you for your time. In order to receive compensation, (a) English is (one of) your child’s first language(s), (b) you and your child must be visible during the video consent and throughout the study, (c) you (the guardian) will need to be with your child during the study to help assist with any technical issues, (d) your child must be in the age range for this study. Each child is eligible to participate to receive a gift card only once .