Science Story Detectives

For 4-6 year old, English-speaking children

In this study, your child will watch and listen to animated stories about kids getting sick and answer questions about the stories. Each story will describe how several children may or may not have been exposed to germs, and your child will be asked to decide who was most likely to get sick as a result.

We are examining how children of different ages reason about contagious illness. Although young children have some knowledge of risk behaviors and contaminants like germs, children do not usually demonstrate a complete causal understanding of illness transmission until middle childhood. This study will allow us to identify when children begin to causally reason about concepts related to duration, proximity, and contact, and when they can apply this reasoning to a more difficult concept like illness transmission. By identifying the age that children develop general causal reasoning skills needed to understand contagion, it will help us target successful educational interventions for future research.

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).