The Children’s School’s standard research policies have been adapted to meet the time constraints associated with research methods courses. The primary difference between the two sets of procedures is that methods course instructors complete some of the standard steps for their whole group of students.

Dr. Sharon Carver (8-1499) must approve all requests to make observations or conduct research at the Children's School so that the costs and benefits of the study can be evaluated according to both research ethics and the school’s philosophy. For standard course assignments, this step is completed by the instructor prior to preparing the course syllabus to avoid conflicts between courses. Dr. Carver then forwards copies of the syllabus and course assignments to the Institutional Review Board for their records.

In order to best meet the semester timeframe, Dr. Carver schedules very few other studies during the weeks that the research methods students are conducting research. For this reason, it is important that both instructors and students follow the syllabus schedule closely.

For the final projects, each research team must submit a complete proposal, including all stimuli, measures and the experiment description, to the course instructor and to Dr. Carver. Including specific detail in these proposals is very important because the reviewers are serving as the Institutional Review Board for these course projects, as well as fulfilling their regular roles. Students may not begin collecting data for their final projects until all requested revisions have been completed and shown to Dr. Carver.

Dr. Carver communicates the nature and timing of course assignments to the Children’s School staff.

Prior to beginning each study that will involve direct interaction with children (i.e., as opposed to pure observation), each research methods student must schedule a time to meet and interact with the children (e.g., read a story to them, have snack with them etc.) in each of the groups that will participate in the study. It is important to establish rapport with the children so that they will behave as naturally as possible in the experimental situation.

•To schedule familiarization sessions, call Donna Perovich (8-2199). The sessions are scheduled Monday through Thursday at the children's snack times (10:15am for morning preschool, 2:00pm for afternoon preschool, and 10:30am for kindergarten). Note that these times are different from the research times listed below. No Friday sessions are scheduled.

•Plan to arrive at the Children’s School at least 5 minutes before your scheduled familiarization time. You will need to buzz at the entrance to gain admittance to the school.

•When you enter the school, go to the office to sign the log book and get a nametag. You must wear the nametag at all times during your visit to the school.

•Wait in the office until Donna Perovich, or another Children’s School staff person, is available to walk you into the classroom. You may leave your belongings in the office.

•Plan to spend about 20 minutes talking with the children. Try to be actively involved with them (without causing disruption) so that they will remember you when you come for your research sessions. This is also a good time to observe the teacher and teacher’s aides to learn effective ways to interact with young children.

•To engage young children in conversation, use very specific topics that are within their experience. During snack, talk about foods (e.g., favorite foods, how foods are grown, colors and shapes of foods, etc.). Ask about the activities the child has done that day (e.g., Did you hear a story today? Tell me about it. OR Did you play in the red room today? Tell me what you played.). Once the child is sharing experiences, you can share yours and extend the conversation (e.g., I like to read stories about animals. What animals do you like? OR I like sand too, especially at the beach. Did you ever go to the beach?).

•When you are finished with your familiarization session, return to the office. When you are ready, ask a staff member to deactivate the alarm before you leave. Otherwise, the alarm will sound when you exit the school.

******* Hints for maintaining good relations with the Children's School Staff *******

•To schedule research sessions, call Donna Perovich (8-2199) before noon on the Friday before the week that you want to conduct the study. The teachers are only responsible for having children available during the scheduled times that they are given on Friday afternoons for the following week. Students should be willing to flexibly adjust to the unavoidable fluctuations in the daily schedule.

•Follow the same entry, sign-in, and exit procedures as described in Step 3.

•If you need to borrow course supplies, ask Donna Perovich. She can also provide a storage place for the supplies your group will gather for your final project so that you can avoid carrying them around campus. Be sure to return supplies when you are finished so that they will be available for other students.

The methods course instructor is responsible for submitting copies of the abstracts from student projects to Dr. Carver, who will then communicate them to the staff and the parents.

Doug Thompson, a third year graduate student working with Bob Siegler, will continue his investigation of young children's early economic concepts, such as supply and demand. He will invite the children to play a game about children running lemonade stands and ask them to predict the effect of certain changes in the situation (e.g., a hot day, more children operating stands, a reduction in price etc. This year, he will ask the children about the effects of supply, demand, sales, and price on each other, rather than always asking about the sales outcome. In this way, he will get a better understanding of their knowledge about economic concepts and the strategies they use to make their judgements.

Bethany Rittle, a third year graduate student working with Bob Siegler, will explore kindergartners' understanding of rehearsal strategies for remembering short lists of numbers (e.g., 6 9 1 3) during a 15 second delay. She will ask them to judge whether the strategies "Leo the Lion" uses are very smart, kind of smart, or not so smart. In a second session, she will ask the children to remember lists of numbers, and she will record which strategies they use. Research with other tasks, such as addition, indicates that children often judge strategies appropriately even when they have not used those strategies before, perhaps based on some basic features that they assume a good strategy should include.

Dr. Martha Alibali, a professor in the Psychology Department, is studying the gestures kindergartners make when solving a simple problem and explaining their solutions (e.g., judging the equality of two sets of checkers, buttons, etc.). She and her research assistants are trying to determine whether there are consistent individual differences in the nature and type of gestures used across a variety of tasks. We know that it’s true for adults; some of us use our hands more expressively than others.

David Liu is a senior psychology major who has taken Dr.Carver’s Child Development class and the Research Methods Class. He is now working with Dr. Martha Alibali on his honors thesis. His study will investigate whether and under what conditions young children rate activities as more pleasurable when they are allowed to choose them than when they are required to participate. Children will hear very short stories about a child choosing to play with a certain set of toys (or being required to play with a certain set) and then be asked which set is they like better. They will hear different stories on three different occasions one week apart. This research has implications for the ways that teachers present activities in the classroom.