Young Scientists 2024

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Venue: Edward Muybridge building, Penrhyn Road campus, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE
Price: free

Sign up deadline: Friday 24 May

We are excited to announce our annual Young Scientists Event for children aged 4-11 will be on Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 May, run by the Developing Minds Lab within the Department of Psychology at Kingston University London. 

Parents are invited to bring their children along to learn about psychology and gain first-hand experience of psychological research. A variety of research activities are available ranging from how we perceive emotions to how we solve puzzles.

Please click here to register your child(ren).
Please note that each form will need to be filled out for each child participating.

What is it?

An exciting opportunity for children to take part in age-appropriate psychology games/research, learn about psychology, and discover what psychologists do.

Your child will be asked to participate in a number of tasks investigating the way in which children process words, shapes, numbers and emotions. Each task will take 10 – 20 minutes and your child will be able to take part in as many or as little activities as they like. They will be given the opportunity to interact with peers and experience exciting methods such as virtual reality, eye tracking, computer games, and focus groups.

What would I do on the day?

Parents can leave children to play games and do research with our team whilst you can wait in the parents room on the same floor (there will be refreshments). You can go elsewhere (e.g., canteen on ground floor) but parents need to stay in the building.

When is it?

During half term - so a great, free opportunity for your budding little scientists during their holiday! Each session is three hours long: you and your child(ren) can either come to the morning session (9.30am - 12.30pm) or the afternoon session (1.30pm – 4.30pm) on either day.

When you book, please ensure you carefully read the Information Sheet before signing your child up. Thank you.

Examples of studies

How do children solve puzzles?
In this study we show children a pattern that has one piece missing and children are asked to find the missing piece out of four options. A better understanding of how children solve puzzles, especially those who perform better compared to those who do not, will allow us to develop better educational intervention programmes.

How do children recognise and understand emotions?
This study aims to investigate the recognition of basic and complex emotions as well as appropriate responses from interactive videos of social scenes. This can help us develop better informed interventions related to social interactions.

Data information

Participation is voluntary, and you will have the right to withdraw at any given time with no questions asked. All data collected will be kept confidential and anonymised for the purpose of our research. Unfortunately, we will not be able to give you specific information about how your child has performed on the tasks. We will however send you a newsletter outlining our findings and the important work your child has done by becoming a young scientist for the day.  

This event is run by Dr Elisa Back and the Developing Minds Lab within the Department of Psychology at Kingston University London.

For further information about this event:

Contact: Dr Elisa Back
Email: e.back@kingston.ac.uk