Two primary goals underlie the research proposed in this application. One is to learn more about the origins and early development of children's interest in and learning about the biological domain, a topic that has received remarkably little attention. The second, which will be pursued concurrently, is to directly examine whether young children's general STEM learning and memory is facilitated by situating it in the realm of biology. In pursuit of these goals, one set of studies will examine very young children's spontaneous reactions to animals, including live animals, as well as films and pictures of animals, compared to various inanimate stimuli. A second set will directly compare preschool children's performance on tasks employing animal and non-animal stimuli. Questions include: Do infants and very young children pay more attention to and show stronger emotional reactions to live animals than to inanimate comparison objects? Do infants find films of animate movement more interesting than the movement of inanimate objects? Can young children learn new information better when the to-be-learned material is situated in the biological domain; that is, can children's attraction to animals be leveraged to support the learning of other, non-biological information? If so, what formats are most effective for presenting the information? This research has the potential to make two types of contributions. First, it will advance our understanding of early conceptual development about the natural world. Second, gaining a better understanding of young children's attunement to the natural world will inform the design and assessment of educational materials for young children.
