The Junior Museum & Zoo is excited to partner with Stanford University’s Social Learning Lab

Hear straight from the Lab about the work they’re doing at the JMZ

At the Social Learning Lab, we are interested in how young children learn about the world around them through exploration and interacting with others. The lab is lead by Dr. Hyowon Gweon and is made up of graduate students and undergraduate research assistants. The lab began running our research studies with children at the JMZ in January 2015, and we have had wonderful experiences interacting with our participants, parents, and staff at the museum.

Many of our studies examine how children interact with and learn about other people, and specifically, how they reason about teachers and act as teachers in social contexts. For instance, how do children decide what to teach others (e.g., do children know what is more useful for learners to know?), and do they know when teachers are uninformative (e.g., do children know when teachers omit useful information?). To investigate these and other related questions, we design short, fun, and engaging studies (we call them “games”), and the studies usually involve children playing with toys, puppets, or watching simple videos.

We involve a broad age range of children in our research, from 2-10 years old, and the studies take no longer than 15 minutes. Our research room is located inside the JMZ, and we are often walking around the museum looking for interested children and parents during the week and weekends. If you see us at JMZ, please feel free to chat with us if you are interested in participating or just curious about what study we are running that day!