We examined the type of death information in children's films and parent- child conversations. We found that children's animated films contained a lot of biologically accurate information about death, however many of the deaths were implied and not explicitly shown. Children asked a lot of question about death in films, and these questions resemble their questions about death in other settings.
We investigated how parents make decisions about the healthiness of foods when presented with different representations of the same nutritional information. Providing parents with nutritional information did not influence their ratings of how healthy food items are. Parents reported talking with their children about nutrition, believed they are the best source of information for children about nutrition, and believed their nutrition beliefs influence their children's beliefs.
We examined the diagrams found in biology books and online to see if their design alligned with research-based practices. We found that many diagrams had perceptually rich backgrounds, which prior research suggests might hinder learning.
We review research on children's understanding of death. In particular we examine how children learn about death by talking with parents, consuming media, and participating in cultural rituals.
We examined whether the perceptual richness of a diagram influences adults' learning and transfer of knowledge about metamorphosis. Adults who saw the bland diagram during the lesson accurately transferred more than adults who saw the rich diagram during the lesson.
We examine how the framing around mental illness influenced how people thought about them. Describing mental illness with an essentialist framing led adult to think drug treatments (but not talk therapy) would be more effective.
We used a mixed-method approach to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Puebla, Mexico. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, they also combined this knowledge with spiritual information.
We manipulated perceptions of variability by priming students before a lesson and by highlighting variability in the diagrams used during the lesson. Priming led to more endorsement of metamorphosis, but only among those with high prior knowledge.
We investigated 3 to 11 year old children and adults’ reasoning about life-cycle changes. The results suggest that endorsement of the different patterns is influenced by age and familiarity.