Pitt Kit Lab - Kids' Thinking Lab at the University of Pittsburgh

09/20/2025

Come see us today at Be My Neighbor Day in Etna! We will be here until 5 pm today with crafts and games.

07/15/2024

04/17/2023

Great job Kalina, Sivan, Nandini, and Ana! These KiT Lab undergraduate research assistants did a wonderful job presenting at the research poster session last week!

03/15/2023

Come and join us at the Be My Neighbor event! There will be tons of games and activities for the kids and several of us will be there to give you more information about our 2-year-old and 4-year-old studies!

10/20/2022

Fun new remote research opportunity!

Do you have a 6 or 12-month-old baby?

We are currently recruiting infants to participate in a study called the RISE Battery. This study is being conducted by Elena Tenenbaum, PhD at Duke University and Shafali Jeste, MD at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Who can participate?

If you child is 6 or 12 months old, lives in the United States, and was born full term (after 37 weeks), they may be eligible to participate!

What will happen?

Your baby will watch child-friendly videos from home (20 min) and you’ll complete surveys about your child’s development (1 hour).

How do I learn more?

Visit our website https://sites.duke.edu/risebattery/about/participate/

06/29/2022

05/24/2022

Check out this new paper from Dr. Libertus and Alex Silver!

Children’s individual abilities and environment influence their mathematics skills. A Review in Nature Reviews Psychology examines how language, socioeconomic status and other environmental factors influence mathematics skills across childhood. Read the Reviews: https://go.nature.com/3LoR4is

05/17/2022

The Kids' Thinking Lab is looking for current and rising fourth graders who are right-handed to participate in the NUMBER Study! You can email numbers@pitt.edu or call us for more information. Please feel free to share!

04/27/2022

We are so proud of all of the Kids' Thinking Lab members who presented their work at the recent biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society in Madison, WI!
Congrats to post doc Andy Ribner, PhD students Shirley Duong, Danielle Fox and Rebecca McGregor, and undergraduate research assistant Kalina McNeil for their fantastic presentations!
A special thank you to all the families who participate and help us with our research

04/04/2022

Somewhere between free play and adult-led play lies guided play, what researchers describe as the activities where children practice different skills with an adult present utilizing prompts and questions to reinforce their learning. Research at the University of Cambridge suggests that guided play may be as effective as adult-led play on children’s learning of math skills. Piecing together numerous past studies, the researchers found that guided play was more effective than direct instruction when learning math skills and shape knowledge. Researchers suggest that this is due to the guided nature of this type of play as it supports logical thinking and mental visualization often required in math.

Teaching younger children through 'guided' play supports key aspects of their learning and development at least as well - and sometimes better - than the traditional direct instruction they usually receive at school, a new analysis finds. Guided play broadly refers to playful educational activities....

04/01/2022

Researchers performed a population-based study of 27,372 children who live in Metro Vancouver, Canada and found that natural green spaces (parks, gardens, lawns, etc.) promote early development by reducing nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a traffic-related pollutant. Nitrogen dioxide and noise exposure are harmful to children as they could lead to increased stress, sleep disruption and adverse effects to brain function. To measure the effects on children, researchers used teacher ratings from the total Early Development Instrument (EDI) as the primary outcome variable. To measure the green spaces near the residential areas, researchers used percent vegetation from Landsat images. The results illustrate that green space exposure limits pollution from traffic and reduces the exposure to noise, which overall benefits behavioral and psychomotor development. These findings can be used to conduct further research as well as infrastructure planning in urban neighborhoods to maximize the number of green spaces. In Pittsburgh specifically, a new parks tax has been implemented, where property owners must pay an extra $50 for every $100,000 of property value. With this tax, it is predicted that $10 million will be raised each year for park improvements in city neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh. Likewise, throughout the nation, the Trust for Public Land is working to make a park accessible within a 10-min walk to every person. Although this will take time, it will provide social, health, economical and developmental benefits to all Americans.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519621002357?via%3Dihub
https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-council-creates-fund-for-controversial-parks-tax/
https://www.tpl.org/city/pittsburgh-pennsylvania

Is Pittsburgh meeting that goal?