The following is a list of research projects affiliated with the CSC. For more information on a specific project, click on the title.The Harold E. Jones Child Study Center continues to support various interdisciplinary research projects related to Preschool-aged children. We offer three testing rooms with one-way mirrors for others to observe testing sessions. Each room is set up with audio access using headphones and an amplifier which can be checked out on-site. Furthermore, the 50 children attending the preschool are available for testing. For those who are interested in observing the children in the classroom setting, we have an observation gallery which stretches the length of each classroom. This gallery can accommodate large groups or individuals.
Numerous research and dissemination projects are in progress at the Child Study Center. Alice Klein, Ph.D., Research Psychologist with the Institute of Human Development, UCB and Prentice Starkey, Ph.D., Professor, Graduate School of Education, UCB, jointly head the Early Childhood Math Project Lab at the CSC. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institute of Health, Klein and Starkey have established a nationally-applicable mathematics curriculum for preparing preschool children for formal math education. Klein and Starkey, in cross-cultural research studying math development in China, Japan and the U.S. have shown that there are inequities in the opportunities young children have to develop and expand their mathematical thinking. Recognizing that preschool children from different socioeconomic backgrounds enter school with different levels of readiness to learn formal mathematics, the Klein/Starkey Lab extensively field-tested in Head Start and State Preschool programs to find that children benefit not only from classroom but home-based math activities. The Klein/Starkey Pre-K Mathematics curriculum has been developed to bring all children to levels necessary for success in school mathematics.
Alison Gopnik, Ph.D., focuses on the "theory of mind"-a field of study that she played a central role in creating-describing when and how young children come to the understanding that others see and understand things differently than they do. This new understanding of the relation between self and others becomes a fundamental tool in the further development of social cognition and social interaction. Gopnik shows that there are significant advances between age 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and again between 5 and 7. Her newest work on the "theory theory" asserts that young children understand the world in terms of causal relations between people and objects, and shows how children behave as active scientists in the course of their attempts to understand their physical and social environments.
Lori Markson's research focuses on word learning and conceptual development in infants and children. In particular,she is interested in how children learn words, and the nature of the mechanism underlying this capacity. Because word learning appears to depend on a host of cognitive capacities, her research spans the fields of cognitive, language, and social cognitive development. A current project her lab explores at the CSC is children's understanding of intentions, knowledge, and preferences. Other projects her lab is researching are infants' acquisition of words compared to non-linguistic properties of objects, and the development of social cognition and economic behavior in children.
At a time when recess and playground activities are widely misunderstood, under appreciated, and sometimes threatened with elimination, Jane Perry, Ph.D., a teacher and researcher at the CSC, identifies the critical intellectual challenges in the pure fun of being outdoors. Her book and research, Outdoor play: Teaching strategies with young children (2001), received national recognition from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, as well as appearing in several media outlets.
Carla Hudson Kam's research addresses first and second language acquisition. In particular, she is interested in how these processes may constrain the form of languages, and how they might influence how languages change over time.
The CSC is the home for the Greater Good Science Center, which is an interdisciplinary research center concentrating on the scientific understanding of social well-being. Researchers from various academic departments, including neuroscience, psychology, sociology, political science, economics, public policy, social welfare, public health, law, and organizational behavior study the social and biological roots of positive emotions and behaviors. The Greater Good Science Center's website and publications make the research accessible for the general public, who can apply the findings on individuals and their relationships to their professional and personal lives.
The CSC has featured leading scholars such as research psychologists Jeanne and Jack Block, Diana Baumrind, and Peter Lenrow, who conducted some of their earliest studies at the Berkeley Child Study Center. Other renowned visitors include guest lectures given by cognitive theorists Jean Piaget and Baerbel Inhelder and by behaviorist Bruno Bettelheim. More contemporary research and scholarship collaborations include the work of Mary Main, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Dan Slobin, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, Vivian Paley, Celia Genishi, Angeliki Nicolopoulou, Anne Haas Dyson, and William Corsaro.