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This report summarizes findings from the summative evaluation of the NSF-AISL funded Narrative Elements Shaping Engineering Engagement design-based research project led by NYSCI. The evaluation examined if and how narrative design elements experimented with by NYSCI and partner teams impacted 7-14-year-old girls’ expressions of empathy and engagement with engineering across different museum activities and settings. Using observation and semi-structured interview methods with 202 girls across three museum settings, the evaluation was designed to: 1) understand whether and how narrative-based elements influence engagement in engineering activities for 7 to 14-year-old girls across three engineering design activities;2) highlight whether and how museum settings influence engagement with engineering practices for 7 to 14-year-old girls; 3) investigate the relationship between engineering practices, narrative practices, and empathy markers for 7 to 14-year-old girls within the designed engineering activities; 4) research how activity designs influence girls’ narrative practices, engineering practices, and empathy markers across activities and museums. To study these related goals involving the intertwined relationship between narrative, engineering, empathy, two conditions (i.e., initially defined as narrative and non-narrative) of three select engineering design activities were observed within one museum, and one activity was implemented across two additional museum sites.
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ManyDogs 1: A Multi-Lab Replication Study of Dogs’ Pointing Comprehension
To promote collaboration across canine science, address replicability issues, and advance open science practices within animal cognition, we have launched the ManyDogs consortium, modeled on similar ManyX projects in other fields. We aimed to create a collaborative network that (a) uses large, diverse samples to investigate and replicate findings, (b) promotes open science practices of pre-registering hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans, (c) investigates the influence of differences across populations and breeds, and (d) examines how different research methods and testing environments influence the robustness of results. Our first study combines a phenomenon that appears to be highly reliable—dogs’ ability to follow human pointing—with a question that remains controversial: do dogs interpret pointing as a social communicative gesture or as a simple associative cue? We collected data (N = 455) from 20 research sites on two conditions of a 2-alternative object choice task: (1) Ostensive (pointing to a baited cup after making eye-contact and saying the dog’s name); (2) Non-ostensive (pointing without eye-contact, after a throat-clearing auditory control cue). Comparing performance between conditions, while both were significantly above chance, there was no significant difference in dogs’ responses. This result was consistent across sites. Further, we found that dogs followed contralateral, momentary pointing at lower rates than has been reported in prior research, suggesting that there are limits to the robustness of point-following behavior: not all pointing styles are equally likely to elicit a response. Together, these findings underscore the important role of procedural details in study design and the broader need for replication studies in canine science.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1658837
- PAR ID:
- 10447086
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Animal Behavior and Cognition
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2372-4323
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 232 to 286
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.26451/abc.10.03.03.2023
