Storybook Task
In the Early Childhood Cognition Lab, we are interested in studying how children use evidence to learn and revise their theories about the world. The storybook task suggests both that children's theories affect their interpretation of evidence and that children can use patterns of evidence to revise their theories.

Indeterminacy and Insides
Both adults and children often explain observed events by referring to unobserved causes: apples fall because of gravity; people get sick because of germs. We were interested in whether preschoolers would use unobserved causes to explain, not only events, but also differences in the probability of observed events.

Gears and Spontaneous Play
If you flip a switch and two gears start to spin there are four possibilities: 1) Gear A spins Gear B; 2) Gear B spins Gear A; 3) neither gear pushes the other (because the switch independently makes each gear spin) and 4) both gears push each other (A won't spin without B and B won't spin without A). The only way to distinguish these possibilities is to remove each gear, flip the switch and observe the other gear. If for instance, gear A doesn't spin without gear B but gear B does spin without gear A, you will conclude that structure 2 is correct: Gear B spins Gear A. Effectively, you are isolating variables, much as scientists do in designing experiments. We are currently letting children play with the gear toy and we are looking at what they learn from the evidence of their own interventions.