How much do you think you know?

Children and adults often think they know a great deal about how things work in the world around them. However, when asked to explain in detail how these things work (e.g. how a bicycle works), adults and children (especially) actually do not know as much as they initially stated. Children in particular lack the ability to understand what they know and what they don't know, as well as knowing when they learned something. Although the ability to understand one's own knowledge becomes more refined into adulthood, it is still a common difficulty found in adults. 

Please click on the link below to watch a fun video demonstrating children's intellectual humility and to read more about this process. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/developing-minds/201309/knowing-what-we-know

How to encourage good behavior in your child

Parents often resort to using bribes to encourage their children to engage in desired behaviors, but research shows that bribes do not work in the long run. What should parents use instead of bribes to encourage good behavior in their children? Here's a few take home messages from the New York Times article provided below:

•  Turn every task or behavior into a game
• Make it a challenge for your child to engage in a specific behavior or task
• Give prizes spontaneously
• Give your child a choice in what they'd like as a reward
• Use praise as a reward
• Focus on the process it took to achieve the desired behavior, don't focus on just the desired behavior

To read the full article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/fashion/modifying-a-

childs-behavior-without-resorting-to-bribes-this-life.html?pagewanted=1 .

How do we know what other people think?

A recent study found that reading fiction improved adults’ ability to figure out what other people are feeling. Knowing what other people feel or think is a skill psychologists call “theory of mind” and it turns out to be an important part of social interaction. Theory of mind begins developing in infancy, and it continues improving throughout childhood.

One of the goals of the MSU MAP project is to better understand how the development of theory of mind relates to children’s thinking about their own knowledge.

Although we don’t know whether reading fiction also improves children’s theory of mind, there is plenty of evidence that reading has other benefits for children thinking and reasoning skills. Looking for good books to read with your child? Check out the New York Public Library’s recent list of 100 great children’s books: http://www.nypl.org/childrens100

Comment below with some of your favorite children's books!

Picture of the Week!

Below is a picture of our child-friendly waiting room here at the KID Lab. 

Delayed Gratification

As children develop, their ability to wait longer for greater rewards increases. Older children are better able to resist having a smaller reward now to obtain a bigger reward later. This is called delayed gratification, and it’s a process that we often use throughout our daily lives. Specifically, the ways in which children think about the rewards and handle their desires become more sophisticated, allowing them to wait longer periods of time when faced with such choices.

The MSU MAP project looks at behaviors and thought processes similar to delayed gratification in children ages five to seven. We hope to better understand how such behaviors and thought processes develop, as well as how they’re related to parenting behaviors, patterns of brain activity, and a range of other factors. Understanding how children think and develop is important in order to create better learning environments to provide children with more positive outcomes throughout childhood and beyond.

Below is a fun video explaining the concept of delayed gratification. 

Picture of the Week!

We will be posting fun pictures to keep you updated on the project. Below is a picture of a recent participant following complete EEG setup: 

How will measuring brain activity help us understand children’s thinking?

Children’s brains grow and change quickly.  These changes, influenced by a combination of biological makeup and life experiences, help children better understand and navigate their surroundings.  In particular, even brain activity involved in making simple decisions helps children learn, grown, and think more deeply about the world and their place in it.  In our study, we are looking at the links between brain activity involved in simple decision-making and more complex types of thinking.        

To study these links, we are using electroencephalogram, or EEG, recordings.  EEG measures naturally occurring electrical signals in the brain that contain information about what is going on inside and outside the body.  EEG is easy to measure and non-invasive, and you cannot feel it working.  It involves wearing an elastic “astronaut” cap that holds the sensors that measure the brain signals.  We use caps that have a lot of sensors in them so that we can get a full picture of the brain.  Here is a picture of what the setup looks like:

We hope that by studying children’s brain activity as they make simple decisions, we can better understand how children develop ways of thinking about what they know.

What are the goals of this project?

Over the first few years of elementary school, children’s thinking undergoes radical changes. Children start to think about information in different ways and they develop ideas about what they do or do not know. Two children who are the same age, even children in the same classroom, might have very different thoughts and feelings about their own knowledge.

The Mind, Attitudes, and Parenting (MAP) Project is studying how children think about what they know. Our goal is to better understand children’s thinking about their knowledge from a number of levels, including the influence of social experiences and the underlying brain processes involved. Our findings are not only intended to contribute to scientific knowledge, but also to help parents and educators better support children’s development.  
We are one of 18 research teams from around the world who are being funded by the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation to study different aspects of how people think about what they know.

On this blogger site, we will be sharing updates on our progress and providing links to interesting news articles and resources related to our project. We also welcome you to submit your questions about our project or children’s thinking more generally.