CLC Lab at CSUSM - RESEARCH

The Child Learning and Cognition Lab at CSUSM focuses on understanding how children from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds learn and develop in their everyday environment. We investigate various aspects, including how children comprehend relational concepts and form unique learning beliefs through interactions with others in their community.

Research Focus

Role of Parental Guidance in Children's Math and Spatial Learning

This line of research examines how parents from first-generation immigrant families or low-SES backgrounds support their young children's learning (e.g., preschoolers and 1st graders) through relational language and gestures that highlight similarities, differences, and common relational structures of events or concepts.

Learning Beliefs and Attitudes in People from Diverse Sociocultural Backgrounds

This line of research explores the values and beliefs about learning among parents, children, and college students from diverse cultural backgrounds. It examines how these factors impact individuals' motivation to learn in the face of challenges.

Current Research Projects

Math and Spatial Reasoning in Informal Learning Settings

This project investigates children's everyday math learning environments in informal settings (e.g., the Boys and Girls Club) and examines how the design of learning materials influences their engagement and learning outcomes

Parental Scaffolding

This project investigates how parents and children use relational language and gestures during everyday conversations across various naturalistic scenarios. The goal is to understand how such interactions support the development of children’s relational reasoning in mathematics, particularly through language- and gesture-based scaffolding in early learning environments

Home Learning Environment and Parent Child Interaction

This project explores how children's home math environment interacts with parent-child communication patterns to shape children's math learning outcomes and their beliefs about learning

Learning Beliefs and Academic Motivation in College Students

A series of projects examines college students’ perceived meaning in life and the purpose they assign to their education and major, and how these perceptions relate to their academic motivation. The goal is to better understand how a student’s sense of purpose influences their engagement and academic success in college.

Cognitive Perceptions of Math Learning

This project draws on dual-process theories in cognition to examine adults’ cognitive perceptions of math learning and how these perceptions relate to their math engagement and attitudes.

Analogies in Educational Media

This research project explores how educational media helps children make meaningful connections that support their understanding of new and abstract concepts

CLC Lab at CSUSM - RESEARCH

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