Paws on Science

On the weekend of May 6-8, several members of UW Psychology, including Katie McLaughlin, Kristina Olson, Jessica Sommerville, Kevin King, Sapna Cheryan, Andy Meltzoff and their associated labs, participated in the UW Paws-on Science event at the Pacific Science Center. This three-day outreach event showcased almost 50 UW research groups. Our faculty and labs put together fun acitivites for the kids.

Dr. Sapna Cheryan’s lab collaborated with the Play Works Studio Company to demo robots with the goal of offering hands on experience that is fun for both boys and girls. The robots move using a simple phone app. Children got to program the robots using the phone app to find creative ways of telling the robots to move from the start tile to the finish tile. Children got to either play on preset puzzles or build their own challenges! Some tiles also did different things than the usual tiles to add optional twists to the game. Learn more about Dr. Cheryan’s work visit her lab’s website. To learn more about the app the children played visit this site.

The Social Cognitive Development Lab, PSYCH Lab, the Stress and Development Lab, and the Early Childhood Cognition Lab collaborated and designed activities that showcased various brain-related activities for kids ages baby - 18 years old. They had crafts (pipe cleaner neurons and paper brain hats), an infant memory task, a personality test, and computer games that taught kids about neural reward pathways and selective attention. Click on the links to learn more about the work at the Social Cognitive Development Lab,  Stress & Development Laboratory and the Early Childhood Cognition Lab at the UW Department of Psychology.