A. How good are young children at recollecting episodes (episodic memory)? If you have a child aged between three and six years you can help us with this study (see below).

B. Why do babies find it so difficult to retrieve completely-hidden objects? If you have a baby between five and ten months of age you may be able to help us answer this question - see below.

C. Future thinking in children aged 3-5 years old.

D. Why do young children think they are invisible when they shut their eyes? For a link to our work on this see Russell, Gee, and Bullard.

Volunteers wanted

A: Episodic Memory Project

Calling all parents of three- to six-year-old children...

Will you be able to bring your child into the lab to help us with this study? We will give you £8 for your expenses and a DVD of your child’s visit. In the study we play a simple role-playing game with children on a first visit. On a second visit children will be shown a video of their visit and of two other children’s visits (with children’s image obscured). We are interested to see whether children can use spatial and temporal cues within the events they witnessed to work out which video is of their own visit. Click here for more details.

B: Babies' searching for objects

Calling all parents of babies between five and ten months of age...

Please note that we are particularly keen to see infants who were born prematurely. It is a long-standing paradox in developmental psychology that while, on some criteria, babies know as early as three months of age that objects continue to exist when hidden behind other objects, they will not search for them (while having the motor skill to do so) until they are around eight months old. We are running two studies to try to find a solution to this paradox. The first tests the idea that babies younger than eight months lack experience in causing objects to become visible through their own actions. This study is for babies aged between six and eight months old (though if your baby was born prematurely, we would test at their 'corrected age'). The study can be run either in our lab or in your own home, and takes place across two days.

Our second study is investigating how babies understand the actions of other people when they search for hidden objects. This study is for babies aged between five and ten months. This study can only be run in our lab, and takes place in one single session. Please contact Richard O'Connor (see below) for details about how to take part in either of these studies. You can also download more information here.

C: Future Thinking study: Here comes the train!

Calling all parents of three- to six-year-old children...

We are interested in learning about how and when children develop the ability to envisage events in the near future. We believe this ability is closely related to the ability to recall past events to mind (episodic memory). In the study a toy train travels around a track and passes by a wall with a little window through which children can gaze on to the track. The train is painted two different colours. Children are shown pictures and videos of the train passing the window and asked to select the one which shows what the train will look like when it eventually passes the window. Click here for more details.

CDCL Personnel

Dr James Russell: jr111@cam.ac.uk , 01223-333553
Dr Patrick Burns: pb527@cam.ac.uk , 01223-764413
Richard O'Connor: rjo31@cam.ac.uk , 01223-766315