Research

Current Studies

Our lab is interested in better understanding how children and college students learn about the world. Check out the descriptions below to learn about our ongoing projects!

Technoference at Children's Museums

Children's museums are highly intentional, well-designed spaces that promote caregiver-child interactions that are crucial for healthy development. Yet, the around-the-clock availability enabled by cellphones adds a layer of possible interruption to playtime: Are caregivers more likely to use their phones in a certain type of exhibit rather than another? Are they really using their phones at all? To answer these questions, we partnered with the Iowa Children's Museum to observe how caregivers and children interact in roleplaying exhibits (like a familiar grocery store) or exploratory exhibits (like a room dedicated to musical intstruments). Our research indicates that phone usage is the lowest of all caregiver and child behaviors, and that the roleplaying exhibit had a higher rate of cellphone interruptions--or, 'Technoference'--than the exploratory play exhibit. We think this pattern might be explained by a lot by the differences in the exhibits' novelty - the music room had unfamiliar instruments intriguing to both children and children at heart, while the roleplaying exhibit was a highly familiar space that may have led to less curiosity from caregivers. We plan to expand this project to other play spaces in the near future!

Word Learning from Books and Screens

Young children learn words in a lot of different contexts - when playing at the park, when cooking in the kitchen with parents, and when reading books at bedtime, among many others. Importantly, there has been a noticeable increase in young children's use of screen time in recent years, yet there is limited research on how this increase in screen time is impacting word learning. Thus, this line of work is interested in better understanding how the format in which young children first experience a word, whether from a book or video, impacts their learning, and if parental support during the process can help improve learning. We are actively recruiting 2.5- to 3-year-old children for this project, so please reach out to us or complete the recruitment form if you are interested!

What do children know about numbers?

Learning about mathematical concepts starts in early childhood, when children learn about quantities, makes comparisons, and even start to count! Current developmental scientists are interested in better understanding how differences in children's number knowledge varies by their geographic location, their age, and the different experiences they have! To answer this question, the lab is participating in an international, multi-site project known as ManyNumbers, where we will have children from ages 2.5 to 5 visit our lab at Augustana and play number games with us. Complete our recruitment form if you are interested in participating in the project in the coming months!

Recent Presentations

Vasich, S., & Lorenz, M. G. (March 2024). Calling all caregivers: Examining technoference in children's museum exhibits. Poster presented at the 13th biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Pasadena, CA, & annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL. Reprint

Freitag, N.G., Notestein, K.A., Witecha, G.L., Lorenz, M.G., & Kucker, S.C. (April 2022). What does it neem? The role of social contingency in word learning through digital media. Poster presented at the 12th biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Madison, WI. Reprint

Hall, S.L., Dillon, K.E., & Lorenz, M.G. (April 2022). Training "close" and "far" during shared book reading. Poster presented at the 12th biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Madison, WI. Reprint

Dillon, K.E., Ferruzza, S., Flinchem, J.A., Gustafson, M., Niederer, B. (April 2021). Spatial language learning via storybooks. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, online. Reprint

Flinchem, J.A., Lorenz, M.G., & Kucker, S.C. (April 2021). Influential factors on generalization and retention in a novel noun generalization task. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, online. Reprint

Publications

Bakopoulou, M., Lorenz, M. G., Forbes, S. H., Tremlin, R., Bates, J., & Samuelson, L. K. (2023). Vocabulary and automatic attention: The relation between novel words and gaze dynamics in noun generalization. Developmental Science, 26(6), e13399. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13399

Lorenz, M.G., & Plumert, J.M. (2019). Mother-child communication about relative proximity to a landmark: What role does prototypicality play? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 178, 41-59. doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.09.011

Kucker, S.C., Samuelson, L.K., Perry, L.K., Yoshida, H., Colunga, E., Lorenz, M.G., & Smith, L.B. (2019). Reproducibility and a unifying explanation: Lessons from the shape bias. Infant Behavior and Development, 54, 156-165. doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.004

Perone, S., Plebanek, D., Lorenz, M.G., Spencer, J.P., & Samuelson, L.S. (2019). Empirical tests of a brain-based model of executive function development. Child Development, 90, 210-226. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12885

Samuelon L.K., & Galligan, M. (2014). Dynamic systems theory and language development. In P.J. Brooks and V. Kempe (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Language Development. Sage Publications.

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