Deborah Kelemen was astonished: in her 2014年的新濠影汇线上赌场研究, many five-year-olds and most seven-year-olds grasped the concept of natural selection, a topic usually reserved for teenagers. 由于克莱门帮助创作了一本关于虚构哺乳动物的教育图画书，她的新濠影汇线上赌场研究参与者（5到8岁）吸收了复杂的生物学理论，甚至开始将其应用到其他例子中。 克莱门想知道，孩子们还能有哪些其他的学习技能呢？ With more than $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, the professor of psychological & brain sciences and the director of CAS’ 儿童认知实验室 is finding out. She shared with 艺术与科学学院 what her work reveals about children’s understanding of science—and how parents and teachers can better help them.

你的新濠影汇线上赌场研究如何改变儿童如何学习科学概念的既定思维？

它告诉我们的是，孩子们有能力掌握比我们通常认为的要复杂得多的东西。 There’s a tendency to give children facts without explanations, but what the storybook does is very gradually and sequentially build up a comprehensive explanation for why a population of animals has the kind of body part they do. 孩子们能够将这种解释应用到新的事例中； that’s one of the marks of deep learning.

How can parents apply what you’ve learned?

They can offer explanations without assuming they will automatically fly over a child’s head. When children ask you a “why” question, give an answer that goes a little bit beyond a statement of fact and tells them something about the mechanism behind it. And if you don’t know the mechanism, look it up together.

你应该给孩子多少细节？

They’ve probably got about the attention span of 40 seconds, unless you’ve got a picture book in front of you. 所以保持简短，温馨，以他们的兴趣为导向。 And if they don’t ask you a follow-up question, ask them one. People often think this isn’t worth doing with three-year-olds, four-year-olds, but kids these ages are already asking very big questions.

对新濠影汇网上赌场还有什么建议吗？

意识到你的偏见。 新濠影汇网上赌场更有可能给小男孩提供科学的解释，而不是给小女孩。 不要读那些花哨的故事书。 孩子们喜欢这些东西，但新濠影汇线上赌场研究表明，他们从这些东西中学到的东西很少，因为有太多的干扰。 鼓励你的孩子解释事情 或者应用他们听到的解释。 孩子们通过大声说出来可以学到很多东西。 模型观察和提问。 散步，大声说出你观察到的动物、物体和事件，以及它们之间的关系。 实验。 Playing with kitchen implements and a bubble mixture, for example, can offer hours of fun. But don’t just observe the physical effects; 更深入地尝试解释其中的机制。

你的新濠影汇线上赌场研究对小学课程有何影响？

关于我们如何在小学早期确定某些概念的时间并将它们联系在一起，有很多重要的问题需要回答。 随着下一代科学标准的到来，我认为有机会建立一些相当丰富的课程。 我希望我们能将实践活动与成人提供的故事书和丰富的解释结合起来，而不是要求孩子们总是自己去发现。

What’s the next stage of your research?

We’ve got several storybooks now, and we’ve taken the work out of the lab and into early elementary school classrooms. 结果非常有希望。 The next stage is to publish these storybooks and get them into the hands of teachers and parents to benefit all children.

Enroll your children (ages birth to 12) in this and other research by BU’s child development labs at bu.edu/cdl/join-us.