Early Experience Lab

Happy Canada Day from the Early Experience Lab 🇨🇦🍁 We are wishing you a safe and fun-filled Canada Day with your friends and family!

The EEL recognizes that we are situated on the territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek. We are committed to the promotion of reconciliation through education. For educational resources developed for use in schools please visit: https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/first-nations-inuit-metis/journeys-of-reconciliation

Our fun fact explains why spending time with friends and family can be crucial for children’s development.

Sources: https://www.verywellfamily.com/making-and-keeping-friends-2633627
https://www.lbusd.org/uploaded/5-TOW/Departments/Documents/Counseling/Do_Kids_Need_Friends.pdf

The Early Experience Lab is looking for volunteer research assistants for the months of May to August! Undergraduate students in the Early Experience Lab help with recruiting new families, running study appointments, coding data, and more!

If you are an undergraduate student looking to gain research experience and can commit approximately 8 hours per week, please send in your application! Applications should include a CV and unofficial transcript. Applications can be sent via email to [email protected].

We look forward to meeting you!

Come participate in Science at City Park! The Early Experience lab will be running fun studies for kids at City Park most Thursdays and Saturdays from now until the end of August.

Saturday July 22nd
Thursday July 27th
Sunday July 30th
Thursday August 10th
Thursday August 17th
Saturday August 19th
Thursday August 24th
Saturday August 26th

Come stop by and say hi!

It's been a busy few weeks here at the Early Experience Laboratory! We have said goodbye to our fantastic honours thesis students Rachel and Katie and travelled to Wisconsin to present a poster at a cognitive development conference. If you live in Kingston, you may have also seen us at Science Rendezvous, where we played games and learned about the science of psychology.

We can't wait to see what new adventures we'll get up to this summer!

It’s Back to School and we are welcoming new students at the Early Experience Lab! We are excited to work with such talented students this year who will be conducting research on topics ranging from the social factors of Theory of Mind like social affiliation and touch🤱 to the more neurobiological factors like EEG brain dynamics during Theory of Mind reasoning 🧠. We look forward to seeing their work and wish them a successful year!

Attention Parents! The Early Experience Lab is looking for more participants aged 3.5 to 5 years old to participate in our online studies! If you have a child this age and are interested in participating, please click the link below to sign up. If you do not have a child that age, please share this post to help us find more participants in this age range! https://www.earlyexperiencelab.ca/projects

Join the Queen’s University Child and Adolescent Development Group for another Circle Time on May 27th at 4:00 PM Eastern!

Circle Time is a free, weekly activities session hosted over Zoom for kids aged 0-7! You can register on Eventbrite to participate in the online fun!
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/circle-time-registration-150209620017

This week at Circle Time, it’s Dinosaur Week!

Some of the awesome activities that we have planned for your kids are dinosaur Simon says, design a dinosaur, and more!

We can’t wait to see you at Circle Time this week!

Our Instagram () is full of information about child development! Just take a look at our most recent post by graduate student Mark Payumo. In this post, he discusses ways that parents can encourage language development in toddlers.

Follow us on Instagram if you don't want to miss our new posts. We post content every Tuesday and Friday!

To learn more about the works cited in this post, check out these papers:

1. Pereira, A. F., Smith, L. B., & Yu, C. (2014). A bottom-up view of toddler word learning. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 21(1), 178–185.

2. Perry, L. K., Samuelson, L. K., & Burdinie, J. B. (2014). Highchair philosophers: The impact of seating context‐dependent exploration on children's naming biases. Developmental Science, 17(5), 757–765.

3. Benitez, V. L., & Smith, L. B. (2012). Predictable locations aid early object name learning. Cognition, 125(3), 339–352

Feature story from the Queen's Psychology department about the great work that lab member Caitlin Atkinson is doing!! https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/feature-story-caitlin-atkinson-march-2021

We're on Instagram! We'll be posting tons of educational content and information about child development. Check out our first post about child language development and follow us at for more information.