Developing an early understanding of contagion in preschool- and kindergarten-aged children

该项目的目标是创建并测试故事书干预的有效性，该干预的重点是增加幼儿对疾病和传染病的生物学知识。这项研究聚焦于传染的主题有几个原因。首先，研究表明，在疾病传播领域缺乏任何明确的指导或培训的情况下，往往会形成幼稚和往往不正确的理论，这些理论后来很难纠正。事实上，有证据表明，一些关于传染的错误理论甚至会持续到成年。其次，教育儿童疾病传播对于健康相关行为的发展非常重要，这对公共卫生有直接影响。鉴于2019冠状病毒病大流行造成的经济和社会混乱，现在是时候编写材料，帮助教育工作者和家长向儿童传授疾病传播知识。该项目将以故事书阅读的形式创建和测试一种非正式学习干预措施，向学龄前和幼儿园儿童提供有关疾病传播因果机制的信息。孩子们将被随机分配听一本关于疾病的故事书，这本故事书旨在告诉他们疾病传播的因果机制，一本关于疾病的故事书没有关于疾病传播的因果信息，或者一本与疾病无关的故事书。然后，研究将在阅读故事书前后以及3个月的随访中测试儿童对疾病传播的认识。措施包括通过使用疾病避免任务来检查儿童对可能受污染的玩具的行为，从而对故事书的行为影响。此外，该研究还调查了从阅读故事书到三个月的随访期间儿童缺课的记录和儿童在家的健康行为信息。这项研究使用这些额外的行为数据来建立一个关于学校本身的流行病学模型，以评估这种干预对更广泛的社区健康的潜在影响。该项目由一个跨学科团队设计，将结合心理学、认知科学和流行病学的技术，创造一种非正式的学习体验，其潜在影响可以直接估计。这项研究在帮助幼儿保护自己免受疾病侵害方面具有潜在的深远影响，开发了一种简单而有吸引力的干预措施，可以为家长、学校、图书馆和其他教育机构所使用。本项目由美国国家科学基金会EDU核心研究（ECR）项目支持。ECR项目强调在该领域产生基础知识的基础STEM教育研究。投资在至关重要、广泛和持久的关键领域：STEM学习和STEM学习环境，扩大STEM参与，以及STEM劳动力发展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to create and test the effectiveness of a storybook intervention that focuses on increasing young children's biological knowledge of illness and contagion. The study focuses on the topic of contagion for several reasons. First, research has shown that in the absence of any explicit instruction or training in the domain of illness transmission, naive and often incorrect theories are often formed, which are difficult to remedy later. In fact, there is evidence that some incorrect theories about contagion persist even into adulthood. Second, teaching children about illness transmission is important for the development of health-related behaviors, which has direct implications for public health. And given the economic and social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is timely to develop materials to help educators and parents teach children about illness transmission.This project will create and test an informal learning intervention, in the form of a storybook reading, to provide preschool- and kindergarten-aged children with information about the causal mechanisms of illness transmission. Children will be randomly assigned to hear a storybook about illness that is designed to teach them about the causal mechanisms that drive illness transmission, a storybook about illness with no causal information about transmission, or a storybook unrelated to illness. The study will then test children's knowledge about illness transmission before and after the storybook reading and at a 3-month follow-up. Measures include the behavioral impact of the storybook by using an illness avoidance task to examine children’s behavior toward a potentially contaminated toy. Further, the study examines records of absences from the children's classrooms and information about children's health behaviors at home from the time of the storybook reading to the 3-month follow-up. The study uses these additional behavioral data to build an epidemiological model about the schools themselves that assesses the potential magnitude of this intervention on broader community health. Designed by an interdisciplinary team, the project will combine techniques from psychology, cognitive science, and epidemiology to create an informal learning experience with potential impacts that can be estimated directly. This research has potential far-reaching impacts on helping young children protect themselves from getting sick, developing an easy and engaging intervention that can be made accessible to parents, schools, libraries, and other educational institutions.This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.