Light up the Box!

For 6- to 10-year-olds

This study will take place on a Zoom video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Participate Now!” 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 explore a “light-up box” by testing different objects to see if the box lights up. Children will experiment, keep track of the results, and explain what they think is happening based on the pattern of outcomes.

This study looks at how children figure out cause and effect from a small number of tests. We’re especially interested in how children decide what to test next, how they use earlier results to narrow down possibilities, and how they combine evidence across tests to form a general rule (for example, whether one object is enough, or whether two objects must be used together). Understanding these reasoning strategies helps researchers learn how children explore, how they build knowledge from evidence, and how early “scientific thinking” develops.

15 minutes

Participants will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift card within 10 business days after the study! Only one gift card will be rewarded per participant. The child participant must belong to the suitable age range of the study and must be visible in throughout the entire experiment.