Development and Experience Center at F&M

Come out to see us at the The Lancaster Science Factory tonight from 5-7 pm! Entrance is free for First Friday. We’re asking kids to draw scientists and tell us where they think science can happen. Kids even get a little science themed trinket for helping us out.

Happy Water Week! We are so excited to be hosting lots of different activities during First Friday to help celebrate Water Week! Lancaster Conservancy will be here handing out seeds, F&M Psychology Department is doing a Draw a Scientist activity, and LSF staff will be running EnviroScape demonstrations!

As always, our standard First Friday rules and guidelines still apply:

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𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲: 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐆𝐨!
We are proud to offer 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟱 - 𝟳 𝗽𝗺 every First Friday! For your safety and enjoyment, 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 is 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝟑𝟎𝟎 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬. Arrive on time to ensure your free admission! Here are some helpful reminders that can ensure everyone has a safe and enjoyable First Friday visit:
▪️ Stick together. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦The Lancaster Science Factory has over 80 hands-on exhibits. Many of them are more fun to explore as a family, and some require extra help for young visitors. 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬.
▪️ Treat our exhibits with care. 💓 We work hard to keep our exhibits and facility in good condition. Handling things gently helps ensure they are working for all visitors. 𝑫𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒐𝒓 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒃𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅.
▪️ Parking Info 🚗 Free parking is available in our marked lot across the street. Overflow parking for First Fridays only is available in the rear of our building. Do not park at the hotel or in spots marked reserved for Urban Place. 𝑾𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒑𝒐𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈, walking and biking! 🚲
Thank you for your understanding of these measures. They will ensure we can safely keep our Free First Friday events going for everyone.

Last week one of our honor's thesis students, Emma, presented some very preliminary results from her senior project. She is exploring how the characteristics of an infant's social network (e.g., the people they are with on a regular basis) influence how willing babies are to take information from familiar vs. unfamiliar adults. The results are really interesting so far (but we don't want to spoil the surprise just yet!).

Emma will be running her project up through this coming weekend (April 20th). If you have a little one between 9-18 months and want to come in to participate in this study, feel free to email us at [email protected] or sign up here!: https://www.dax.fandm.edu/sign-up

(Bonus picture of Professor Howard's son participating in the study)

For the first time in a quite awhile, the DAX Center is running a project with babies! We're interested in whether infants prefer to learn information from their parents or a friendly new person (one of our students), and exploring how infant social experiences outside the lab influence this. It's a quick, fun, study on our campus. You can sign up here for more info (https://www.dax.fandm.edu/sign-up) or email us at [email protected]. Families receive an age-appropriate toy or $10 Amazon gift card for participating.

As we wrap a really amazing summer research session, we want to say THANK YOU to all the families that came into the lab over the last few months. Our robot study was so fun to run and we hope your kids had fun too.

Here’s a little write up F&M published, focusing on this project and the students that helped make it happen. We can’t wait to start looking through all the data!

Franklin & Marshall – Interdisciplinary Child-Robot Research Merges Psychology and Technology

The DAX Center will be at the Science Factory today for the Science is Amazing Festival! We’re here to talk about our work and to ask your kids to help us “draw a scientist” so we can learn more about how kids perceive of science. Come say hi!

Attention all visitors! This is a reminder that the Lancaster Science Factory is hosting the 2023 Science is Amazing Festival this 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗹 𝟮𝟯𝗿𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟭𝟮:𝟬𝟬 - 𝟱:𝟬𝟬𝗽𝗺. The event is free but it is 𝗦𝗢𝗟𝗗 𝗢𝗨𝗧. Unless you have pre-registered for a free ticket you may not be able to enter.

The DAX Center is looking for children age 6-12 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who would like to participate in a fun new project!

Feel free to sign up or contact us for more information!

Development and Experience Center Sign Up Sign up to have your infant or child participate in a fun research study on early development.

Last week, Dr. Lauren Howard presented some of the Dax Research at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) conference in Salt Lake City, Utah!

Dr. Howard presented work on how children use communicative signals like gesture to group people into friend groups, and was part of a poster with collaborator Dr. Laura Shneidman (PLU University), exploring how social cues influence the way children learn and imitate.

We still have a few spots left for the online study exploring how children group according to gesture, so if you're in the US and have a child between the ages of 4-10 years and want to participate for an Amazon gift card, let us know!

Last week, a number of our wonderful undergraduate research assistants presented on our summer projects during Franklin & Marshall College's True Blue weekend.

If you participated in studies looking at 1) gesture and friendship or 2) how children learn to use analogies, we have some findings that will soon be coming your way! Thanks to all the wonderful families who help support our research by participating.

The DAX Center is looking for 6-10 year old children who would like to participate in a short study over Zoom. This study will explore how children value different living creatures depending on their species. Sign up here (https://www.dax.fandm.edu/sign-up) or send us a message for more information!

Has your child ever "fibbed" or lied to you, even about something that seems unimportant? Those early lies can actually suggest that your child is reaching important mental milestones!

In this Ted Talk, Dr. Kang Lee (Professor at the University of Toronto) talks about the development of lying in children, what it indicates, and how good adults are at actually determining when a child is lying or not. Fun information from another developmental research lab.

Can you really tell if a kid is lying? Are children poor liars? Do you think you can easily detect their lies? Developmental researcher Kang Lee studies what happens physiologically to children when they lie. They do it a lot, starting as young as two years old, and they're actually really good at it. Lee explains why we should celebrate...