Applying a Developmental Lens to Educational Game Designs for Preschoolers

Preschool-aged learners process information differently from older individuals, making it critical to design digital educational games that are tailored to capitalize on young children's learning capabilities. This in-depth literature synthesis connects features of digital educational game design - including visuals, feedback, scaffolding challenge, rewards, and physical interactions to how young children learn. Preschoolers' interests and abilities (e.g., limited attention-span, early reading skills, etc.) are different than older users. As such, developmental science should be used to guide the design of educational games from aesthetic decisions that capture preschoolers' initial interest (e.g., meaningful characters) to carefully select end-of-game rewards (e.g., leveling up). This article connects learning and developmental science research to the design of digital educational games, offering insights into how best to design games for young users and how to select developmentally appropriate games for children.

Why are we still so WEIRD? Barriers and bridges towards a diversified science of early development

Why are we still so WEIRD? Barriers and bridges towards a diversified science of early development Leher Singh, Alejandrina Cristia, Lana B. Karasik, and Lisa M. Oakes Author NoteLeher Singh, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Alejandrina Cristia, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France; Lana B. Karasik, Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island & Graduate Center, CUNY, Staten Island, New York, U.S.; Lisa M. Oakes, Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis, Davis, CA, U.S.A.C., L.B.K., and L.M.O contributed equally to the manuscript. Acknowledgments: We are very grateful to Sarah J. Rajendra for assistance with data collection and processing. This manuscript was supported by sabbatical funds from the National University of Singapore to LS and by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-0017), the J. S. McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award, European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ExELang, Grant agreement No. 101001095) grant awards to AC, National Science Foundation Grant DLS-1349044 and Grant DLS-1528831to LBK.Address for correspondence: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Leher Singh, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, 9 Arts Link, Singapore 117570. RUNNING HEAD: Diversifying developmental science AbstractIn developmental psychology, no population has been more relevant to the study of the origins of human behavior than infants. The psychological processes of infants often inform fundamental theories of innateness and/or universality of behavior. However, infant samples are typically small with narrow sociodemographic variation. This review examines changing trends in sociodemographic representation in psychological research with infants. Analyses of 1383 studies, published over the past decade, revealed both consistent underreporting of sociodemographic information and clear skew towards White infants from North America/Western Europe. The impact of these findings on our understanding of and interpretation of research on early human development is discussed. A set of principles and practices are presented to advance towards a more global developmental science.

Open Developmental Science: An Overview and Annotated Reading List

The increasing adoption of open science practices in the last decade has been changing the scientific landscape across fields. However, developmental science has been relatively slow in adopting open science practices. To address this issue, we followed the format of Crüwell et al., (2019) and created summaries and an annotated list of informative and actionable resources discussing ten topics in developmental science: Open science; Reproducibility and replication; Open data, materials and code; Open access; Preregistration; Registered reports; Replication; Incentives; Collaborative developmental science.This article offers researchers and students in developmental science a starting point for understanding how open science intersects with developmental science. After getting familiarized with this article, the developmental scientist should understand the core tenets of open and reproducible developmental science, and feel motivated to start applying open science practices in their workflow.

Acknowledging Bias and Pursuing Protections to Support Anti-Racist Developmental Science: Critical Contributions of Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory

American racism is deeply engrained in the nation’s ecology including its chronosystem and contributes to the nation’s unavoidably shared vulnerability. Interrogating an accurate portrayal of the nation’s history is informative for securing anti-racist research. This special issue commentary discusses the role of Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) as a means of providing an epistemic framing for disentangling and directly addressing the problem of structural racism in the conduct of science. Additionally it demonstrates the efficacy of PVEST and offers conclusions as opportunities for achieving anti-racist scholarship especially significant to adolescents’ well-being and the improved conduct of developmental science.