Alexis Rogers
Research Mentor(s): Josephine Monahan
Mentor Department: Psychology
Authors: Alexis Rogers, Josephine Monahan, David Menendez, Susan Gelman
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 89
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic not only impacted the healthcare industry, but the day-to-day lives of individuals worldwide, ultimately altering the way society works, interacts, and learns. Children today, many of whom have grown up in the pandemic, have been influenced in their understanding of illnesses and protective measures, and have experienced what life looks like with COVID regulations in place1. At the Conceptual Development Lab, the COVID Project aims to better understand how children think about viral transmission and illness, and to inform educational tools that can help them learn about viruses. We collected, coded, and analyzed data from interviews with children to determine how they learned about viruses through different versions of a children’s book, and to investigate whether anthropomorphism influenced their learning. One of the books was realistic; going into detail about what happens inside the body during illness, and discussing why different preventative measures are effective in limiting the spread of COVID-19. Another version was anthropomorphic; covering the same material as the realistic book, but depicting the virus with human-like characteristics. The last book was a control version, which did not go into detail about how the virus works inside the body. We interviewed 220 children between the ages of 5 and 8 years old on Zoom, using Qualtrics to evaluate what they knew about viral properties, protective measures, and viral transmission before and after reading one of the books about COVID-192. There was no notable difference in post-test knowledge between the realistic and anthropomorphic conditions. However, children in the control condition scored lower on average in the post-test than those in the realistic or anthropomorphic conditions. This study concluded that carefully constructed picture books can be effective tools for expanding children’s understanding of illnesses.
