Participation
The Cognitive Development Lab is proudly partnered with nearly 60 day-care centers, preschools, and elementary schools in the Columbus area! Our participants range in age from 2-9 years-old. We provide our partnered schools with permission forms for students within this age range. Parents may choose to complete the permission form and return it to the school. We will only work with children whose parents have completed the permission form.
Our Procedures
Our research manager will reach out to your school to schedule a time for the visit. During a visit one or two of our researchers will come to your school to work with students one-on-one. First, we will introduce ourselves in the main office to provide you with all of our required paperwork. All of our research assistants have federal and state background checks and are screened through ODJFS. Our researchers will come with all of the research materials needed, you simply have to provide a table and space for them to work. We prefer to work in an empty classroom if one is available so that the students can participate with few distractions. If an empty room is not available, we can also set up in a quiet hallway.
Once set up, our researchers will walk the selected students from the classroom to the testing area to participate in the study. The student will be asked before leaving the classroom and before starting the study if they would like to play the game. At either instance, the child is free to say “no” and they will be escorted back to the classroom without participating in the study. A typical study is about 10-15 minutes long. At the end of the study, the student will be rewarded with stickers to take home and escorted back to the classroom.
We make every effort to conduct our research in a way that causes minimal disruptions to the classroom!
Our Results
When a child participates in our studies, they are given a subject number. We use this number to record their results rather than their name to ensure confidentiality of our participants. The results are collected and analyzed by our researchers to find trends in learning processes across different age groups. These results have the power to contribute to the field of psychology and education through journal articles and scientific conferences. We also provide our partnered schools with a summary of the studies we performed throughout the year to distribute to parents!
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact:
Michaela Miller at coglab@osu.edu or 614-688-3970