Granny's Gratitude Stickers

For 10 year olds

Your child will meet Granny, a lovable character who often drops objects she's holding due to her clumsiness. Fortunately, Granny has some helpful friends who step in to catch the items she drops. We will present your child with six stories, each featuring two friends who assist Granny by catching her things. After each story, we will ask your child to decide which friend Granny should thank by giving them a sticker.

We want to understand how children think about different outcomes when faced with a situation where one outcome is clearly worse than the other. We aim to determine whether children can use counterfactual reasoning to predict what might have happened if someone hadn't helped Granny. For example, if no one had caught the glass before it hit the ground, it would have fallen and broken into pieces. We believe that children who can imagine these alternative outcomes will understand that it's worse for the glass to fall onto the floor than onto a soft and fluffy bean bag, and they will thank the friend who caught the glass that was about to fall onto the floor. Previous research has shown that children's ability to do this develops gradually with age and cognitive development. Younger children may struggle to consider alternative outcomes, whereas older children tend to make more accurate judgments of counterfactual situations. Through this research, we hope to gain insights into how children think about other people's actions and how they make judgments about what could have happened.

10 -15 minutes

You will receive a $5 gift card for participating in this study. To be eligible for the gift card, your child must be in the age range for this study and you must submit a valid consent statement. Also, your child must be visible during study. Each child is eligible to participate in the study and receive a gift card only once. We will send a gift card even if you do not finish the whole study or we are not able to use your child's data. Gift cards will be sent within one week of study completion. Please note that we only offer Amazon.com gift card at this time, thanks for your understanding.