Featured Research

Have you ever wondered whether a partner’s behaviour can affect preschoolers’ later behaviour?

The study

A recent study in our lab investigated whether partnering with a collaborative or uncollaborative (virtual) partner changed preschoolers’ turn-taking behaviour after the interaction.

What we did 

We created a game where children aged 4–6 took turns with a virtual partner to complete a task. In between two rounds of this game, they played a game with a different partner who either gave them lots of turns or gave them no turns.

What we found 

After children played the game with a partner who gave them turns, they were more likely to give their next partner more turns. Interestingly, girls and children with better language skills showed the most sensitivity to their partner’s behaviour

Implications

This work suggests that children’s turn-taking carries over from prior experiences, but that the degree to which this is the case depends on their own characteristics. This work is also relevant for settings where it may be useful to strategically partner children.

Reference

Valcke, A. V., & Nilsen, E. S., (2026). Past partner behaviour affects children’s turn-taking with a new partner, but this depends on child characteristics. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 104, 101944.

Can children learn from teaching a robot?

The study 

A recent study from our lab investigated whether 8 to 10-year-olds could learn a new classification system through the process of teaching it to a robot. We also looked at whether the robots' behaviour and mistake patterns would affect children’s perceptions of the robot, teaching strategies, and learning outcomes.

Results 

Children learned better from robots who made mistakes that did not follow a typical learning pattern. In addition, mistakes in general lead children to engage in more advanced teaching strategies (e.g., explaining the rules) - with greater levels of these teaching strategies associated with greater learning gains.

Implications

Findings from this research can provide new insight into how children learn and the strategies we can use at home and in the classroom to promote children’s learning. We are currently conducting further analyses to determine whether children’s characteristics relate to their perceptions of and behaviour towards the robot. This allows us to understand if learning through teaching robots works better for some children, and why.

Have you wondered what influences children's actions and behaviours when they interact with their peers?

The study 

A new study from our lab investigated how 4–6- year-old children communicate and share with partners during an online game that is designed to be either cooperative or competitive.

Results

Valcke and Nilsen (2022) found that children generated more prosocial comments after they received a message from their partner indicating interest in working as a team (vs. a self-focused message). Children were more prosocial in what they said and what they did during a cooperative vs. competitive game. Thus, children reciprocate the communicative tone of their partner and align their behaviour with the game objective. In terms of skills that facilitate prosociality, this work found that children with better cognitive skills (executive functioning and reasoning about others’ mental states) shared more items, and said more prosocial comments, to other players… but only in a cooperative context.

Implications

Prosocial behaviour in early childhood is associated with later social and academic successes. These findings provide information as to what cues children rely on within social contexts, as well as the individual skills for generating context-appropriate behaviours.

Reference

Valcke, A., & Nilsen, E. S. (2022). The Influence of Context and Player Comments on Preschoolers’ Social and Partner-Directed Communicative Behavior. Journal of Cognition and Development, 1-27.

Have you wondered how children learn how to repair miscommunication?

The study 

A new study from our lab investigated 4- and 5-year-old children’s ability to use non-verbal cues from someone they are speaking with to figure out whether their message was understood.

Results 

Bacso et al. (2021) found that children were able to tell if their message was successful based on the recipient’s facial expression. They also found that children with better cognitive skills (executive functioning and emotion knowledge) were better able to know when they were misunderstood and were more likely to attempt to fix what they said (when they were misunderstood).

Implications

Findings have implications for our understanding of how children become effective speakers and for practical interventions to improve children’s communication skills.

Reference

Bacso, S. A., Nilsen, E. S., & Silva, J. (2021). How to turn that frown upside down: Children make use of a listener’s facial cues to detect and (attempt to) repair miscommunication. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 207, Article 105097.

Have you wondered about the potential impacts of social media use on youth well-being?

The study 

A new study from our lab investigated 13–16-year-olds' motivations for posting on social media and their characteristics that influence their online interactions.

Results 

With data from over 100 participants, adolescents reported wanting engagement and entertainment in response to their posts, followed by support and advice. There was a gap in expectations, with adolescent posters wanting a greater amount of each response than social media users perceived. We also found that adolescents with positive peer relationships wanted more engagement and entertainment in response to their posts, while adolescents with greater emotion regulation skills wanted to entertain others with their posts.

Implications 

Findings from this research can provide new insights into the transparency of adolescents’ online communication, the communicative expectations they hold for others, and the characteristics that influence their online interactions.