Lab Mission Statement
From a social-justice approach, our lab examines how cultural practices and values guide children's development. Our current projects focus on prosocial behavior, executive function skills and STEM learning in informal settings by examining the dynamic relationship between culture and development.
P.I. Lucia Alcalá, Department of Psychology, CSU Fullerton (lualcala@fullerton)
Current Research Projects
Development of Executive Function skills (EFs) in Yucatec Maya and European-American Children
EFs include working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. These cognitive skills have been measured using laboratory tasks that tend to be biased against children from diverse communities.
This project, in collaboration with Dr. Lindsey Richland (UCI) and Dr. Suzanne Gaskins (NIU), will expand existing theoretical understandings of reasoning and Executive Function (EFs) skills in young children by developing culturally relevant EF measures using multi-method data from two groups, first /second-generation immigrant Latinx and middle-class Euro-American 5-10 year olds, and testing relations to children’s home participation in high cognitive demand tasks.
[Supported by a small research grant from the Spencer Foundation]
Many everyday activities, like collaborating with family members on productive activities and taking the initiative to help at home may provide opportunities for children to develop Executive Function skills.
Learning to Help at Home
Children's Prosocial Behavior
Helping at home is common across all communities. Toddlers everywhere are eager to help. However, older children in some Indigenous communities of the Americas are more likely to help on their own initiative, making substantial contributions to their household. For example, Maya children report that helping at home is a shared responsibility among all family members and they are motivated to help based on their sense of belonging to the group, as well as their eagerness to not be viewed as lazy.
Research Mentions in the Media
STEM Learning in Informal Settings
STEM learning can take place in a plethora of settings across STEM domains suggesting that these learning experiences are crucial for efforts to increase early STEM learning across communities (Hurts et al., 2019).
The acquisition of medicinal plant knowledge is one way to examine how STEM learning happens in the family context
Many Yucatec Maya children help adults by collecting and preparing plants to help ailing relatives.
We are currently examining how Yucatec Maya children learn about the uses of medicinal plants and develop an understanding of health and illness, and how these in turn can lead to STEM learning and transform children's role in the family and community.
In a recent study, Yucatec Maya "children identified the use of 16 medicinal plants used to cure common illnesses in their community, including skin, respiratory, or digestive problems." These plants are commonly found in their backyard and nearby fields.
Yucatec Maya children also reported about the importance of preserving this ancestral knowledge and the social responsibility children and any member of the community acquire once they learn how to use medicinal plants.
For more information you can contact our lab via email at csuf.casa.lab@gmail.com or contact our P.I. Lucia Alcalá at lualcala@fullerton.edu.
All images belong to L. Alcalá & D. Jimenez.
Credits:
Photo by Deira Jiménez (2016)