We’re going to the zoo: Interactive educational activities with animals boost category-based induction in children

Abstract

The research took place at Aston University and was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council Studentship, and a Twycross Zoo Conservation Fund, awarded to the first author. We would like to thank the Education Team at Twycross Zoo and the staff and pupils at our participating schools for their contributions to this work.

Experience‐Driven Semantic Differentiation: Effects of a Naturalistic Experience on Within‐ and Across‐Domain Differentiation in Children

“…The increase in within‐domain differentiation was accompanied by an increase in differentiation of items from distinct domains—even though children already differentiated between the two domains at pretest. These findings both support prior findings suggesting a key role for the accumulation of experience with entities in promoting changes in semantic structure (e.g., Badger & Shapiro, 2019; Coley, 2012; Unger et al, 2016), and extend those findings by directly showing that the accumulation of experiences with items in a domain lead to increases in within‐domain differentiation that is specific to an experienced domain (but not to specific items within that domain), as well as increases in across‐domain differentiation .…”

“…A smaller body of research has also shown effects of brief learning experiences on children’s semantic networks. For example, participating in enrichment learning activities at a zoo—whether a week‐long program (Unger & Fisher, 2019) or a single session (Badger & Shapiro, 2019)—lead to pre‐ to posttest changes in children’s grouping of animals in biologically meaningful ways. Although broadly consistent with the predictions from computational modeling studies, by only examining changes in a single domain, the existing studies have not examined across‐domain differentiation as a direct result of experience.…”

“…To test the hypothesis above, we examined changes in semantic structure in preschool‐ and kindergarten‐aged children enrolled in summer camps at a botanical garden; these young children are unlikely to have highly differentiated representations of biological categories targeted by the camps (Hatano et al, 1993; Unger et al, 2016). Unlike prior studies that recruited separate training and control groups (Badger & Shapiro, 2019; Unger & Fisher, 2019)—leaving open the possibility that differences between groups were driven by factors other than the learning experience—all participants were children whose parents enrolled them in a program at the same botanical garden. Also unlike prior studies which examined changes in a single domain, we measured changes in within‐ and across‐domain differentiation of two biological domains in children who completed one of two summer camps.…”

Learning outcomes measured in zoo and aquarium conservation education

“…Yet, providing the instruments enables the reader to trace the methodology, makes the instru-ment available to the community, and may encourage other researchers to measure it in a similar way. Providing both an explicit definition derived from theory and the instruments used (e.g., Badger & Shapiro, 2019) can help future researchers to work with clear and consistent definitions and methodologies.…”

Food Neophobia in Childhood

“…There are few hints to think it could be the case. For instance, it has been recently shown that a short exposure to few animals through a class trip to a zoo enhances animal category-based induction performances (Badger & Shapiro 2019).…”