Research Interests
Children and Technology
My research explores how children think and learn about the world around them using technological devices. As our world digitizes and children spend an increasing amount of time learning not just from parents and teachers, but from search engines and voice assistants, I am interested in how children use these new tools to understand and learn new information.
Girouard-Hallam, L.N., Streble, H.M., & Danovitch, J.H. (2021). Children’s mental, social, and moral attributions toward a familiar digital voice assistant. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 3(5), 118-1131.
In a study with 80 6-10 year old children, we found that a majority of children attributed some mental and social qualities to voice assistants, and that younger children were more likely than older children to attribute social and moral qualities to voice assistants.
Girouard-Hallam, L.N., & Danovitch, J.H. (2022). Children’s trust in and learning from digital voice assistants. Developmental Psychology, 58(4), 646–661.
In two studies with 80 4-5 and 7-8 year old children each, we found that children's intuitions about when to trust voice assistants vary with age. With increasing age, children showed greater trust in the voice assistant for factual information and greater trust in the human for personal information about the experimenter identified as her friend.
Children’s Judgments About Asking for Past, Present, and Future Information from Google and a Person
Girouard-Hallam, L., & Danovitch, J. (2022). Children’s Judgments About Asking for Past, Present, and Future Information from Google and a Person. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 44, No. 44).
In a study with 80 7-10 year old children, we found that older children more frequently trusted Google and less frequently trusted a person for information about current events than younger children did, but that children's trust in each informant was stable across participant age for information about the past.
Girouard-Hallam, L. N., & Danovitch, J. H. (2023). Children's interactions with virtual assistants: Moving beyond depictions of social agents. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e34.
In this invited commentary, we discuss current trends in research on children's understanding of technological informants, particularly voice assistants, and the impact of this research on theories about how humans conceptualize social robots.
Published Work
What can the internet do?: Chinese and American children's attitudes and beliefs about the internet
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Girouard-Hallam, L. N., Tong, Y., Wang, F., & Danovitch, J. H. (2023). What can the internet do?: Chinese and American children’s attitudes and beliefs about the internet. Cognitive Development, 66, 101338.
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In three studies, we create, validate, and explore demographic predictors of a new measure for children's internet attitudes. Themes of children's intuitions about the accuracy and scope of the internet, and their comfort using it independently, are explored.
How does Google get its information?: Children's judgments about Google search.
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Girouard-Hallam, L.N. & Danovitch, J.H. (2024). How does Google get its information?: Children’s judgments about Google search. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
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In a study with 9- and 10-year old children, we ask children to tell us how confident they are that Google and a smart person could answer certain kinds of questions, and where they think each of these sources get their answers from.
Overheard and understood: A systematic review of children's learning from overhearing
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Girouard-Hallam, L.N. & Norris, M.N. (2024). Overheard and understood: A systematic review of children’s learning from overhearing. Translational Issues in Psychological Science.
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In a systematic literature review, we explore 20+ articles on children's learning from overhearing and discuss recent trends in overhearing literature.
Can we Google that?: Children's beliefs about the capacities of three technological devices.
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Girouard-Hallam, L.N. & Danovitch, J.H. (2024). Can we Google that?: Children’s beliefs about the capacities of three technological devices. Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
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In a study with 216 4-12 year old children, we asked a series of questions about the capacities and limitations of Alexa, Google search, and the internet.
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