Vanderbilt Child Studies Group

Happy October CSG Friends! We are pumped for the fall season and all the fun things we have planned coming up! Our socials are getting a bit of a revamp so stay tuned for exciting news about upcoming events and content you can expect. In the meantime, we thought we'd reintroduce ourselves and spotlight our amazing directors!

The Earth Day at Centennial Park was fabulous! It felt nice to explore some “green” ideas and learn more about the Earth! We were pleased and grateful to meet everyone and share our work at CSG. We enjoyed making creative crafts and paintings. Thanks to everyone who joined our activity and signed up.

If you are interested in learning more about CSG feel free to like and follow us on Facebook! We also have an Instagram page Child Studies Group

Or check out our website vu.edu/child-studies-group. Thanks for coming out and we look forward to seeing you all at our next event! Enjoy the sunshine in April!

The Cherry Blossom Festival was wonderful and beautiful🤩! It was great to enjoy the impressive spring view in Nashville under sunshine🌸! We were pleased and grateful to meet everyone and sharing our work at CSG. We had some amazing memories of making crafts that perfectly fit the pink vibe of cherry blossoms. Thanks to everyone who joined our activity and signed up.

If you are interested in learning more about CSG feel free to like and follow us on Facebook! We also have an Instagram page Child Studies Group

Or check out our website vu.edu/child-studies-group. Thanks for coming out and we look forward to seeing you all at our next event! (Spoil Alert: it will be the Earth Day event at Centennial Park on April 22nd😁)

Here's where CSG will be! This weekend, the Child Studies Group will be in Downtown Nashville for the beautiful Cherry Blossom Festival! Come enjoy the spring vibe and our wonderful event! We will also be in Centennial Park for Earth Day and in Franklin for Arbor Day. Check out the dates and time for each event and join us! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on our Instagram Child Studies Group

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

The Brain Blast was fabulous! It was great to see all the brain scientists that make Nashville amazing! We also loved meeting everyone and sharing our work at CSG. We had some great experience of making crafts and understanding our brains. Thanks to Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Nashville Public Library for inviting us to help at this event.

If you are interested in learning more about CSG feel free to like and follow us on Facebook! We also have an Instagram page Child Studies Group

Or check out our website vu.edu/child-studies-group. Thanks for coming out and we look forward to seeing you all at our next event!

Here's where CSG will be! The Child Studies Group will be at at the Main Library downtown for Brain Blast on March 25 (which is this weekend!). In April, we will be in Downtown Nashville for the beautiful Cherry Blossom Festival and in Centennial Park for Earth Day! Check out the dates and time for each event and join us! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on our Instagram Child Studies Group

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

About Us Who are we? We are a team of eleven (and counting) faculty in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College who are working to better understand child development from infancy to adolescence. We are particularly interested in children’s growth in t...

So excited for this event! Mark your calendars and check it out!

About Us Who are we? We are a team of eleven (and counting) faculty in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College who are working to better understand child development from infancy to adolescence. We are particularly interested in children’s growth in t...

Here's where CSG will be! The Child Studies Group will be at Centennial Park for the Lunar New Year Celebration on January 28 for the year of the rabbit! In March we will be right on Vanderbilt University's campus for Brain Blast! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram Vanderbilt Child Studies Group

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

New Year! New Lab! New chance to help with research! Check out the SEA Lab and how you can help below:

The Stress and Early Adversity Lab examines how children’s early experiences affect later development. A major focus is to characterize variation in children’s early environments to understand how this may impact brain development, and ultimately, child mental health, behavior, and development. Our goal is to provide high-quality research that informs prevention and intervention efforts to support families and foster positive child outcomes.

Starting in January, we will begin recruiting for a new study, the Assessment of Brain development and Child experiences (ABC study). The ABC study will involve visits during pregnancy, and at 1, 6, 12, and 18 months following birth and involve infant MRI and lab- and home-based assessments. Through this study we hope to characterize multiple aspects of children’s early environment to understand the role of these experiences on brain development. If you are currently pregnant and interested in the ABC study or want to learn more, please visit our website or complete an interest form!

Interest Form: https://redcap.vanderbilt.edu/surveys/index.php?s=ELNAX7CCKY
Website: http://www.vusealab.com

Are you looking to give back this holiday season? You can help the Child Studies Group with our research efforts! Help us out by signing up to join our registry and participate in research.

Interested in learning more before signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Young children vary widely in their skills and motivation for learning. The Little Learners Lab is interested in understanding the origins of this variability, as well as its consequences for children’s language development, scientific literacy, and school readiness.

Led by Dr. Amy Booth, this research team is currently aiming to develop effective ways to measure differences in young children's interests, enjoyment, and self-confidence in the domain of science. They are seeking children between the ages of three and five. Children will be asked to complete tasks that measure different aspects of their interest in science, and the session will last up to thirty minutes.

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Check out what our labs have been studying! This information comes from the Early Development Lab. They have been working with families and learning about how story time can be beneficial in family connection!

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Happy Halloween! This week's spooky lab feature is the Language Development Lab!!

In the Language Development Lab they are interested in discovering how infants and young children learn language. They are curious about children’s ability to understand words and infants’ ability to make sense of conversation. The studies typically involve children in late infancy through the preschool years.

In some of their current studies, they investigate infants’ understanding of talk about absent things. They are curious about when and how babies understand that you can use language to talk about things that are not present (for example, parents who are away for the day, missing toys, or upcoming events). In other studies, they ask questions about how preschoolers learn names for things and the questions they ask about words.

The studies are designed to be enjoyable for infants and children. During the study, they might try to teach a child some new words or ask them to play with novel objects or to find hidden objects. We learn about how children learn words from how they respond to our questions!

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Check out this throwback! We can't wait to be at Adventure Science Center again this weekend! Fall Into Science is going to be so much fun! We hope to see you there.

Ever wondered how your brain grows overtime? Our brains do not fully develop until 25 or older so there are constant changes happening! The Brain Development Lab investigates brain growth and changes. They focus on how children develop reading, math and scientific thinking.

Currently, a main project in our lab is investigating how literacy develops in children who are D/deaf and hard of hearing. Another project we are working on investigates the relationship between reading and anxiety in children. We use behavioral measures as well as neuroimaging methods (fMRI) to understand how reading and language develops. Our work has important implications for the identification and treatment of developmental disorders as well as educational interventions for literacy.

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Here's where CSG will be! The Child Studies Group will be at Moss-Wright Park for Halloween in the Park on October 22 for some tricks and treats! The next day we will be at Adventure Science Center for Fall into Science on October 23! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We also will be at Vanderbilt University for their West End Neighborhood Halloween Festival on October 28! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

This week we are highlighting the Children's Learning Lab!! They study how children learn and how to improve their learning. Their research focuses on learning key concepts and problem-solving procedures in mathematics, with an emphasis on experiences that promote learning. For example, what roles do comparison or generating explanations have in promoting learning of concepts and procedures?

They currently have two projects they are working on:

Family Math: Fostering Parents’ Support of Their Children’s Numeracy and Patterning Development. This study focuses on parents’ support of two aspects of their children’s math development: patterning knowledge and numeracy knowledge. Specifically, it focuses on understanding how parent and child characteristics relate to parents’ patterning and numeracy support and the malleability of these characteristics for promoting parents’ patterning and numeracy support.

Exploring the Development of Children’s’ Number Knowledge
Number skills are critical to both our academic and everyday life success. The current study aims further our understanding of how children develop their understanding of the ordered number sequence and identify skills related to this knowledge.

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Have you ever just wanted to play and learn? That is the aim of Child Studies Group and this weeks lab! This week we are highlighting the Hands-On Play Lab (HOP).

HOP is run by Dr. Amy Needham and studies how infants learn about their world, specifically through play! The lab’s current studies are focused
on object exploration, and how infants interact with their environments.

1. PLAY Project: This project is centered around how infants play naturally in their home environments. This is important to learn about because the behavior infants engage in at home is what they learn from the most. The lab is actively recruiting 12-, 18-, and 24 month-old infants for this project: to learn more visit https://www.anhourinthelife.org

2. Understanding Hand Skills: The study aims to evaluate changes in fine motor skills during the early preschool years and learn more about objects and tasks that might help these skills improve.

Dr. Needham and her team typically conduct studies with different populations, such as children with Down syndrome, and strive to create a community of belonging for all participants and lab members. They believe that deeper understandings
of typical and atypical development can enrich each other, and that both of these are worthy of their time and attention. Their ultimate goals are to create and promote optimal learning opportunities for all children that will lead to improved quality of life.

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Celebrate Nashville Cultural Festival was amazing! It was great to see all the performances and celebrate the different cultures that make Nashville amazing! We also loved meeting everyone and sharing our work at CSG. We had some great coloring of different people from around the world in traditional clothing. Thanks to Kidsville for inviting us to help at this event.

If you are interested in learning more about CSG feel free to like and follow us on Facebook! We also have an Instagram page group

Or check out our website vu.edu/child-studies-group. Thanks for coming out and we look forward to seeing you all at our next event!

Did you know Child Studies Group has 12 different research labs?! Each week we are going to highlight a new lab in CSG. This week we are highlighting the Computational Cognitive Development Lab (CCDL).

The CCDL is a developmental psychology lab in the Vanderbilt Child Studies Group led by Dr. Deon Benton. The CCDL studies cognitive development in infants and young children, ranging from as young as 3 months to as old as 5 years of age. The research in the CCDL focuses on two broad questions. First, how do infants and young children learn about cause-and-effect relations in the world? Second, how do infants evaluate others based on their social and moral actions? To answer these two questions, the CCDL relies on experiments and computational modeling!

Interested in learning more and signing up to help? Visit our website vu.edu/child-studies-group to sign up! You can also visit our Instagram or contact us for more information at [email protected] or 615-538-8344

Here's where CSG will be! The Child Studies Group will be at Celebrate Nashville Cultural Festival and The Wond'ry for Tennessee Makers Fest on October 1st! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We also will be at the Discovery Center for STEAM-a-Palooza on October 15th! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

It was a great time this weekend at Kidsville! We loved getting to meet everyone and interact with your families. Here are some photos from our first event of the fall semester featuring our brain maps activity. Our next event will be October 1st at The Wond'ry and Celebrate Nashville Cultural Festival. We hope to see you all at our future events.

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram .

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

Here's where CSG will be! The Child Studies Group will be at Kidsville this Saturday! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn! We also will be at The Wond'ry for the Tennessee Makers Fest and at Celebrate Nashville Cultural Festival on October 1st! We look forward to seeing you all at these events!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram .

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

The Child Studies Group will be at Kidsville this Saturday from 12-6 PM at Musicians Corner! Come visit us for fun crafts and learn how we use science to figure out what and how children think and learn!

If you want to know more right now, visit us at vu.edu/child-studies-group or on Instagram .

You can also reach us at [email protected] or by phone at 615-538-8344

We look forward to seeing you all on Saturday!

Ever wonder how children develop an interest in math? Check out the results of our study! Talking about math concepts with your young children while playing with toys can encourage their exploration in math. If you're interested in participating in studies like this, follow the link to sign up: https://peabodycsg.app.vanderbilt.edu/csg/nlogon/signup
---
The infographic reads: Math Play at Home. When playing with different toys, parents and preschoolers explore broad math concepts from numbers to patterns and space. The study: Parents and preschoolers played with three different toys (Lego blocks, stringing beads, and playing cards). Families talked about sizes and spatial features of blocks; created copied, and extended bead patterns; and compared and counted cards and their numbers. The takeaway: Different toys encourage exploration of different math concepts. For example, cards support number exploration, blocks emphasize spatial exploration, and beads encourage pattern exploration. Tips for parents: When playing with your child, emphasize lots of math concepts, from numbers, to patterns, and to space. FOr example, identify the written numbers on playing cards, count the pictures of the suits, and compare which card has more. Build something together and talk about the spatial features (e.g., sides, corners, shape, position). Create and recreate patterns in art projects, talking about what makes your designs have a pattern (e.g., have a part that repeats).

Check out the results of our study on social groups! Children can pick up on when you talk negatively about another group, which can have lasting effects on their biases. If you're interested in participating in research like this, follow this link to sign up: https://peabodycsg.app.vanderbilt.edu/csg/nlogon/signup
---
The infographic reads: Learning About Social Groups. Children judged a new social group more negatively after overhearing a video conversation in which a caller said negative things about that group. The study: Children 4-8 years overheard a video call between a researcher and caller who either did or did not make negative claims about a new social group's character, food, clothing, and language. Children who overheard negative claims (especially 7-8 year-olds) rated the group more negatively and wanted to interact with the group less. These effects remained two weeks later. The takeaway: Overhearing brief, negative messages about other social groups (from children or adults) can have robust and lasting effects on children's intergroup biases. Tips for parents: Be mindful of the type of messages that your child may overhear. For example, be careful about what your children hear you and others say during phone or video conversation, or what they overhear from news broadcasters on the radio or television.

The Children's Learning Lab's research focuses on children's development of math skills and and the ways that parents can foster their math learning. If you're interested in checking out their research, you can follow the link to their website: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu//departments/psych/research/research_labs/childrens_learning_lab/

If you're interested in signing up to participate in a study with the Child Studies Group, you can sign up with this link: https://peabodycsg.app.vanderbilt.edu/csg/nlogon/signup

Hey parents! Did you know that you play an important role in encouraging your children's interest in science ? Check out the results of our study by looking through the photos. If you're interested in signing up to participate in our studies, follow this link: https://peabodycsg.app.vanderbilt.edu/csg/nlogon/signup
---
The infographic reads: Parents play an important role in encouraging their children's interests, and success, in science. The study: We looked at how parents talk to their 3-year-olds during play sessions with "scientific" toys. The takeaway: When parents talked a lot about how and why things work, their children wanted to learn even more! Also, encouraging children to explain for themselves how the world works was related to how much they knew about science. Tips: Talk with your child about how the world works! Encourage your child to explain why or how something happened - instead of just explaining it yourself.