Do Guardian Characteristics Impact Children's Interaction with Museum Exhibits?

Developmental psychologists are interested in how children learn in a variety of social contexts. Museum exhibits are designed to promote interaction with materials and prompt conversations to support learning. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether there was a relationship between guardian characteristics and how children interacted with the Sun, Earth, and Moon museum exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. More specifically, the present study examined whether (1) there was a relationship between the guardian's gender and the child's on task or off task behavior and (2) if there was a relationship between the guardian's estimated age and quality of the child's interactions. To test these hypotheses, we conducted naturalistic observation of 149 children. We coded characteristics of the child (perceived gender, estimated age), characteristics of the guardian (perceived gender, estimated age), and the type of interaction the child used to engage with the exhibit (appropriate physical interaction, sustained attention, interactions with others in relation to the exhibit.) Chi Square analyses were used to determine whether there was a relationship between the guardian's gender and the child's on task or off task behavior. Results indicated that there was no significant relationship between guardian's gender and whether the child was on task (X squared (2, N=116)= 2.44 ns) or off task (X squared (2, N=116)= 4.443 ns). We conducted three separate One-Way ANOVAs to test whether the estimated age of the adult was associated with whether the child exhibited each of three types of educational interactions (appropriate physical interaction, sustained attention, interactions with others in relation to the exhibit.) The results of these analyses were non-significant. These results will be discussed in terms of limitations in the present study and a need for further research