{"id":4220,"date":"2022-04-25T18:08:33","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T22:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=4220"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:18","slug":"how-we-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2022\/04\/how-we-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Learn"},"content":{"rendered":"
Associate professor Amy Joh\u2019s research seeks to unlock how children make sense of the world around them.<\/div><\/div>\n

By Jen A. Miller<\/p>\n

Amy Joh wants to know how our brains grow. As an associate professor of psychology and director of Seton Hall\u2019s Child Learning Lab, Joh studies how young children develop cognitive and motor skills, and how they take information from the world around them and learn to do things that they later take for granted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really interested in bringing together the why or how we go about the world and get that perceptual information we need to do the things we have to do every day,\u201d she says. \u201cJust getting up and brushing your teeth and walking down the street and finding your way to the office and typing on your computer are all things that need cognition.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Understanding how those cognitive skills are built can allow parents and caregivers to help develop them in children at a young age.<\/p>\n

Joh has a particular interest in how toddlers learn about spatial relationships.<\/p>\n

In one study, she brings out three tubes and puts a marble at the top of one tube and asks a preschool-age child where the marble will end up. If the tubes are perpendicular to the ground, the toddlers will guess that the marble comes out of the bottom of the tube. But if the tubes are on a diagonal, the toddler will still guess that it flows straight down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve spent three years watching most things fall straight down. They also know that things follow paths. They\u2019re putting most things [together] but at 3 years of age, they still expect things to fall straight down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Giving them hints before the exercise doesn\u2019t help. Teaching kids a song about where the marble will roll doesn\u2019t make a difference either.<\/p>\n

What does work? Making each of the three tubes a different color. That helps children guess that the marble will roll to the end of the tube. The kicker, though, is that once the tubes are changed back to all being the same color, the same kids will guess the marble will roll straight down again.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudies like this can speak to how kids learn how to do things in everyday life, what input they seek and how much experience is needed,\u201d Joh says. \u201cWhat happens when they get information that\u2019s contrary to how they think the world works?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaziela Ishak, associate professor of psychology at Ramapo College, attended graduate school with Joh. She notes that \u201cunderstanding the development of spatial abilities relates to so many different areas of development, such as tool use, problem solving, independent navigation, even eating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ishak enrolled her child in one of Joh\u2019s studies, knowing that it\u2019s not always easy to recruit participants and because she knew her son \u201cwould enjoy the study because it is set up like a little game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The studies help in understanding cognitive development, she adds, because children this age may not be able to accurately express their abilities in a verbal way.<\/p>\n

Seton Hall\u2019s Child Learning Lab has been closed to children since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that hasn\u2019t stopped Joh\u2019s research because she and Autumn Cataldo \u201922 have been putting the studies online.<\/p>\n

Posting the tube study online is the subject of Cataldo\u2019s honors thesis. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at the original study and asking, \u2018How do we make this work in a reliable virtual way?,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Not only do online options help researchers continue their work, but they also account for the way that today\u2019s children have, for most of their lives, grown up.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents are among the most important teachers for young children, so we want to see how learning occurs in a more natural, home environment,\u201d Joh says. \u201cA lot of these children have spent more time at home than they normally would in the last two years.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Online versions of the studies also should show if the learning process has changed as a result of the shift in environment. Cataldo hopes to go on to become a school psychologist, specifically for elementary school children, and to also help students with learning disabilities. Working on this research not only will make her a better psychologist, she says, but will also \u201chelp us help children learn.\u201d
\n
\nJen A. Miller is the author of<\/em> Running: A Love Story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate professor Amy Joh\u2019s research seeks to unlock how children make sense of the world around them.<\/p>\n

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