This past semester I have had the privilege of taking Developmental Psychology at Gustavus Adolphus College with Dr. Kyle Chambers where I have gained an understanding of developmental psychology through a hands-on group research project in collaboration with the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota. For the research project, each group was responsible for selecting a developmental psychology research article to base their project on, and to then modify the study so it could be performed in a museum setting.
My group based our study on research by McKrink, Bloom, & Santos that investigated equitable resource distribution. From this article, we created our own version of their experiment and conducted it at the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota on November 7th, 2015, along with the other groups from our class. It was both rewarding and fascinating to see the children’s reactions to our experiment and their thought processes. It made the research that we had read about more tangible and added an element of depth to our understanding. I feel very grateful to have participated in this research because it has given me a better understanding of developmental psychology and the research it’s founded in.
Representatives from the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota will be attending Gustavus Adolphus College’s Fall Psychological Science Research Symposium to review the variety of research projects conducted through the Developmental Psychology course and Gustavus’ Center for Developmental Science.
Submitted by Tatianna Thurik ’17
