Psychology research study benefits students, community and science itself

By Chuck Gordon

Science centers provide a fun and interesting day out for families. But how much do kids actually learn while they're splashing at the water table or gazing upward in the planetarium? And how much can a touch of parent involvement change the equation?

Dr. Candace Lapan, associate professor of psychology, and some of her students are hoping to find out via a two-semester research project at the Monroe Science Center.

Dr. Candace Lapan

Through the Performance Understanding and Person Perception in Youth (P.U.P.P.Y.) Lab she started at Wingate, Lapan and Wingate students study how children form beliefs about themselves and others, including beliefs about academic and social skills. Since the fall 2025 semester, on Wednesdays through Saturdays, Wingate students have been enlisting child volunteers as they enter the science center. Using cameras and microphones, students observe participants between the ages of 4 and 12 playing at the space, water or sand tables in the center, with the station chosen by the spin of a wheel. The participants answer survey questions before and after their play sessions and are rewarded with prizes, such as bead kits, puzzles and terrariums. The idea is to gauge just how much scientific information they absorb while interacting with the exhibit.

"Especially for questions that are specific to each exhibit, the kids definitely give a lot more specific answers, especially if they have a really good time there," says Michelle Benton, a senior psychology major. "There've been some kids who've been at the space table, and playing with the black holes and the planets, blowing up stars or whatever, and they always mention that in their postquestions."

The Monroe Science Center, which opened three years ago in a former grocery store three blocks from Main Street, offers plenty for kids to do. At one exhibit, they make paper airplanes and see how they fly. In another, they control a lander over the rocky terrain of Mars and in an instant switch to piloting a drone over the same red landscape. At another station, they get a close-up view of bugs and other small items through a microscope.

On a recent Saturday, the museum was bustling, with kids lingering for several minutes at an exhibit before eagerly running to the next one. Although most were clearly having a blast, were they learning anything new?

Senior Michelle Benton goes through survey questions with a study participant.

"We know a lot about how kids learn science in a classroom," Lapan says, "but not as much about museums, science centers, art museums, these other types of environments that parents often see as just an opportunity to go have fun, though they are really thoughtfully designed to educate kids about science topics."

The Wingate students have already learned a lot, such as how to recruit students to participate (first, convince the parents, and play up the prizes) and what to do if they won't. For instance, they're finding that 11- and 12-year-olds are reluctant to take part, so they've scaled back the initial 100-participant goal for the study. "It's just too hard to get them interested," Benton says. And, as Lapan reminds them, "If the kid says, 'I'm not interested,' they're done. You can't force them to do it." So far, about 60 children have participated since the research began in October 2025.

Lapan's students are also learning the soft skills that will help them do research in grad school and perform well at their postgraduation job, such as how to approach strangers and persuade them of your cause and how to describe scientific research to a lay audience.

"Visitors to the science center are not going to walk up to your table and say, 'Please tell me what you're doing here today,'" Lapan says. "They're just going to walk past you and ignore you. You have to talk to them. … That part is always hard, but that's a very important communicative skill that they're learning, pushing them outside of their comfort zone."

Good experience for Wingate students

The students are also learning simply how to do research. This semester, they've started examining the video and audio they've been gathering and "coding" that information: categorizing the data in order to extract themes and patterns from it. Over the next few months, they'll have an opportunity to write papers revealing their findings.

A big part of the project is the study of "scaffolding" - the idea that parents bolster children's learning with questions and comments.

Michelle Benton and Kelsey Shapiro man the table at the science center on a recent Saturday.

"That could be helping them read something, pointing something out to them," Lapan says. "It could be asking a question. It could be physically assisting them with part of an exhibit. It could also be more motivational scaffolding: encouraging them and giving them positive feedback. I think that we're going to see some interesting differences, what kids are getting from that experience, with that and without it."

The research could lead to published papers, Lapan says. Another concrete benefit is that it could be good for the science center.

"I think oftentimes it's really just researchers coming in and saying, 'I have this question that I want answered,'" she says. "I certainly have questions I want answered, and we'll answer those, but the other things are to give the science center some feedback."

Lauren Fike, director of the Monroe Science Center, was happy to partner with Wingate's Psychology Department. "Anything we can use to prove the importance of a facility like this is great," she says.

"There are a lot of facilities that are more entertainment vs. educational, and this museum, we're about half and half," she adds. "We want you to be entertained, but we also want you to learn. A lot of people maybe just see us as the entertainment side, and they'll sit down and let their kids go for it. We're trying to prove that your child will learn more if there's more interaction between child and parent. This study does a lot of that."

Other beneficiaries of the research are the students conducting it. Benton plans to go on and get a master's degree after she earns her bachelor's in December, and spending eight months doing consistent research will help her stand out.

Same for Kelsey Shapiro, a sophomore nursing major from Concord who is minoring in psychology. She wants to eventually become a nurse practitioner, and she says that many of the skills she's learning will help her in that pursuit and as a bedside nurse: interacting with children and parents, collecting and "coding" data, and then analyzing and interpreting that data.

It won't hurt her resume either.

"I feel very lucky as a sophomore to be selected for the project and to get research experience," Shapiro says. "I think this gives me more experience and more insight that other people wouldn't have."

Learn more about the P.U.P.P.Y. Lab. Families who would like to participate in the research are encouraged to email [email protected].

March 24, 2026