Below are descriptions of the projects involved with Oxford Science Adventures this half-term. They include investigations into children’s language and reading development, understanding of number, and attention and learning. The projects you'll be invited to take part in at Oxford Science Adventures will depend on the age of the children. If you have any questions about any of these projects, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
How do children sustain their attention?
Sustained attention is one of the most basic and intuitive aspects of cognition: it refers to the ability to stay “alert”, “concentrated" and “on-task” over time. It underlies many important skills such as learning, academic functioning, social interactions and more. Although undeniably essential, it is very difficult to assess sustained attention in children. We are trying to develop a new way of thinking about - and measuring - sustained attention, in a way that will be engaging for children, while still tapping their ability to stay alert. Your child will play a short computerised game in which children will be asked to "catch" an animal appearing from behind a tree at unpredictable intervals. In order to do so, children will have to remain focused and alert - or they will miss the animal.
How do children with and without autism combine information about what they see?
How children see things is important in how they learn to interact with the world around them. For example, in order to see the overall movement of a flock of birds, children need to be able to combine information about each bird’s movement. This project is looking at whether children with autism combine information in a similar way to children without autism. This may help us to understand feelings of sensory overload experienced by some children with autism. In this project, children will play some fun computer games where they will be asked to work out the overall direction of a shoal of fish, or the way that a group of jellyfish are facing. Children will also do some standard language and reasoning tests and we will check their vision with an eye chart.
Making words stick: promoting children’s reading development
At the start of Primary School, most children are slow and inaccurate at reading, effortfully "sounding-out” individual words. Yet, by the end of Primary school, they are well on their way to having a fluent, effective and efficient reading system that processes written language in much the same way as adults do. Although we know that children make this transition, we know remarkably little about how it happens. Our experiments are addressing a range of questions: How do children deal with new words that they encounter for the first time when reading a story? How to we best structure and organise reading practice so as to optimize word learning and reading development? Do new words need to be encountered many times in order to be learned properly and if so, how many times and should the context in which they occur vary or stay the same? Is it better to learn little and often, or massed into one go? Does testing children’s fragile knowledge while they are still in the process of learning ultimately lead to better retention in the longer term? Our experiments are presented via story books and computers; they are fun and engaging - and educational!
How do children of different ages judge the size of shapes?
In this project, we are looking at how children judge the sizes of shapes, and how this is affected by the presence of surrounding shapes. We are particularly interested in how this ability changes as children get older. Children will be asked to judge the sizes of shapes in trading games on the computer, as well as on pieces of card. We will also test your child’s vision with a standard eye chart.
How does timing information improve attention and memory? Come and see your memory in action!
In this project, children will play a fun memory game, to help us understand how children use timing information to improve their attention and memory. Our brains are able to focus attention on moments in time when certain events happen, which helps us to react to things faster. For example, if you are at a set of traffic lights and they turn orange, you know that the green light is coming, so you can prepare to start the car. We already know that children aged 6 years and over can anticipate events and divert their attention to improve their behaviour. But now we want to understand if this ability can help children to remember, which is important in understanding how children learn. In the future this may help us identify ways of helping children who have difficulties with remembering things.
Developmental changes in learning and understanding social cues
As children make the transition to secondary school, relationships with peers become increasingly important. This project aims to investigate developmental changes in learning about self- and peer-related cues across the life span and how this relates to social skills and adjustment. Young people will learn associations between shapes and people and be asked to respond as quickly as possible about whether a shape and person match is right or wrong. They will also do some short tasks where they will be asked to recognize the perspective and emotions of other people and to answer questions about how people think and feel in social situations, portrayed in pictures, stories or film clips.
Numbers - love them or hate them?
Maths is often a controversial subject. Some people love it; some hate it; and some like parts of it but not others. I will be asking children questions about their attitudes to maths: how much they like or dislike it; and whether they like some topics within maths more than others. I will also give them some maths problems, to see whether people tend to like those aspects of maths that they find easiest, or whether they find more difficult maths more interesting.
What kinds of sentences do children understand?
Complex sentences are sentences where one sentence is ‘nested’ in another – for example if we put the sentence The boy fell into the sentence She caught the boy we end up with the sentence She caught the boy that fell. These sentences are really important for children’s educational success and to help them in conversation with those around them. Despite this we have very little information about which types of complex sentences children find easy or difficult to understand. This project aims to develop an animated computerized assessment of complex sentences, which will allow therapists and teachers gain a more accurate picture of what typically developing children understand. Children will listen to different sentences while looking at some short animations on an iPad and will have to decide if the sentence they hear is the correct one that goes with the animation shown
How do children sustain their attention?
Sustained attention is one of the most basic and intuitive aspects of cognition: it refers to the ability to stay “alert”, “concentrated" and “on-task” over time. It underlies many important skills such as learning, academic functioning, social interactions and more. Although undeniably essential, it is very difficult to assess sustained attention in children. We are trying to develop a new way of thinking about - and measuring - sustained attention, in a way that will be engaging for children, while still tapping their ability to stay alert. Your child will play a short computerised game in which children will be asked to "catch" an animal appearing from behind a tree at unpredictable intervals. In order to do so, children will have to remain focused and alert - or they will miss the animal.
How do children with and without autism combine information about what they see?
How children see things is important in how they learn to interact with the world around them. For example, in order to see the overall movement of a flock of birds, children need to be able to combine information about each bird’s movement. This project is looking at whether children with autism combine information in a similar way to children without autism. This may help us to understand feelings of sensory overload experienced by some children with autism. In this project, children will play some fun computer games where they will be asked to work out the overall direction of a shoal of fish, or the way that a group of jellyfish are facing. Children will also do some standard language and reasoning tests and we will check their vision with an eye chart.
Making words stick: promoting children’s reading development
At the start of Primary School, most children are slow and inaccurate at reading, effortfully "sounding-out” individual words. Yet, by the end of Primary school, they are well on their way to having a fluent, effective and efficient reading system that processes written language in much the same way as adults do. Although we know that children make this transition, we know remarkably little about how it happens. Our experiments are addressing a range of questions: How do children deal with new words that they encounter for the first time when reading a story? How to we best structure and organise reading practice so as to optimize word learning and reading development? Do new words need to be encountered many times in order to be learned properly and if so, how many times and should the context in which they occur vary or stay the same? Is it better to learn little and often, or massed into one go? Does testing children’s fragile knowledge while they are still in the process of learning ultimately lead to better retention in the longer term? Our experiments are presented via story books and computers; they are fun and engaging - and educational!
How do children of different ages judge the size of shapes?
In this project, we are looking at how children judge the sizes of shapes, and how this is affected by the presence of surrounding shapes. We are particularly interested in how this ability changes as children get older. Children will be asked to judge the sizes of shapes in trading games on the computer, as well as on pieces of card. We will also test your child’s vision with a standard eye chart.
How does timing information improve attention and memory? Come and see your memory in action!
In this project, children will play a fun memory game, to help us understand how children use timing information to improve their attention and memory. Our brains are able to focus attention on moments in time when certain events happen, which helps us to react to things faster. For example, if you are at a set of traffic lights and they turn orange, you know that the green light is coming, so you can prepare to start the car. We already know that children aged 6 years and over can anticipate events and divert their attention to improve their behaviour. But now we want to understand if this ability can help children to remember, which is important in understanding how children learn. In the future this may help us identify ways of helping children who have difficulties with remembering things.
Developmental changes in learning and understanding social cues
As children make the transition to secondary school, relationships with peers become increasingly important. This project aims to investigate developmental changes in learning about self- and peer-related cues across the life span and how this relates to social skills and adjustment. Young people will learn associations between shapes and people and be asked to respond as quickly as possible about whether a shape and person match is right or wrong. They will also do some short tasks where they will be asked to recognize the perspective and emotions of other people and to answer questions about how people think and feel in social situations, portrayed in pictures, stories or film clips.
Numbers - love them or hate them?
Maths is often a controversial subject. Some people love it; some hate it; and some like parts of it but not others. I will be asking children questions about their attitudes to maths: how much they like or dislike it; and whether they like some topics within maths more than others. I will also give them some maths problems, to see whether people tend to like those aspects of maths that they find easiest, or whether they find more difficult maths more interesting.
What kinds of sentences do children understand?
Complex sentences are sentences where one sentence is ‘nested’ in another – for example if we put the sentence The boy fell into the sentence She caught the boy we end up with the sentence She caught the boy that fell. These sentences are really important for children’s educational success and to help them in conversation with those around them. Despite this we have very little information about which types of complex sentences children find easy or difficult to understand. This project aims to develop an animated computerized assessment of complex sentences, which will allow therapists and teachers gain a more accurate picture of what typically developing children understand. Children will listen to different sentences while looking at some short animations on an iPad and will have to decide if the sentence they hear is the correct one that goes with the animation shown