Brandy N. Frazier

I'll have what she's having: the impact of model characteristics on children's food choices.

This research investigates childrens use of social categories in their food selection. Across three studies, we presented preschoolers with sets of photographs that contrasted food-eating models with different characteristics, including model gender, race (Black, White), age (child or adult), and/or expression (acceptance or rejection of the food). Children were asked to pick between the photographs to choose which food they would like for snack. Results demonstrated that preschoolers prefer foods being eaten by models with positive over negative expressions, foods being eaten by child over adult models, and foods being eaten by child models of the same gender as themselves over models of the other gender. This work connects with previous research on childrens understanding of social categories and also has important practical implications for how characteristics of a food-eating model can affect childrens willingness to try new foods.

Changing Museum Visitors’ Conceptions of Evolution

We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n = 30), youth, and child (n = 34) museum visitors’ reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors’ understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors’ intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and post-measures, we assessed how visitors’ causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a result of visiting the exhibition. Whatever their age, background beliefs, or prior intuitive reasoning patterns, visitors significantly increased their use of explanations from the evolutionary reasoning pattern across all measures and extended this reasoning across diverse organisms. Visitors also increased their use of one intuitive reasoning pattern, need-based (goal-directed) explanations, which, we argue, may be a step toward evolutionary reasoning. Nonetheless, visitors continued to use mixed reasoning (endorsing all three reasoning patterns) in explaining biological change. The personal, socio-cultural, and contextual variables were found to be related to these reasoning patterns in predictable ways. These findings are used to examine the structure of visitors’ reasoning patterns and those aspects of the exhibition that may have contributed to the gains in museum visitors’ understanding of evolution.

Young Children Prefer and Remember Satisfying Explanations

Research with preschool children has shown that explanations are important to them in that they actively seek explanations in their conversations with adults. But what sorts of explanations do they prefer, and what, if anything, do young children learn from the explanations they receive? Following a preliminary study with adults (N = 67) to establish materials for use with children, we addressed this question using a seminaturalistic methodology. Four- and 5-year-olds (N = 69) were dissatisfied when receiving nonexplanations to their explanatory questions, but they were satisfied when receiving explanations, and their satisfaction varied appropriately across several levels of explanatory information. Moreover, using recall as a measure of learning, whereas children typically failed to recall nonexplanations, their recall of explanatory information was consistently high and also varied appropriately across differing levels of information provided. These results confirm that children not only actively seek informative explanations in their everyday conversational interactions with adults, but they selectively retain the answers they receive.

How Much are Harry Potter's Glasses Worth? Children's Monetary Evaluation of Authentic Objects

Adults attach special value to objects that link to notable people or events—authentic objects. We examined childrens monetary evaluation of authentic objects, focusing on four kinds: celebrity possessions (e.g., Harry Potters glasses), original creations (e.g., the very first teddy bear), personal possessions (e.g., your grandfathers baseball glove), and merely old items (e.g., an old chair). Children ages 4 to 12 years old and adults (N = 151) were asked how much people would pay for authentic and control objects. Young children consistently placed greater monetary value on celebrity possessions than on original creations, even when adults judged the two kinds of items to be equivalent. These results suggest that contact with a special individual may be the foundation for the value placed on authentic objects.