Smith Connections

Department of Psychology

For more than 25 years, 澳门葡京博彩软件教授Jill de Villiers和Peter de Villiers对学龄前儿童的语言发展和相关认知成就进行了研究, often enlisting the help of the children at 希尔堡. 他们通常给孩子们看他们制作的绘本，里面有专门设计的问题, or play games with puppets to see if they can teach the puppet to "talk right,或者让他们猜测在我们表演或播放的视频故事中，某人接下来会做什么. 其中一些工作是“纯”科学，但其中大部分具有非常实际的实际成果.

所有的研究都必须通过学院的机构审查委员会对人类受试者的使用, 谁确保研究符合保护儿童权利和保密的要求.

Language and Theory of Mind
希尔堡是一项针对3岁和4岁儿童的纵向研究的地点，该研究表明，在孩子能够推断另一个人的信仰和知识之前，一定的语言习得是必要的. This work was extended across several languages, 这一发现也得到了失聪儿童的证实，这些儿童在学习口语时往往会出现语言发育迟缓. 德维利尔夫妇仍在研究语言如何在这一重要领域帮助思考, 并获得一笔新的拨款，用于研究德克萨斯州和佛罗里达州的一大群低收入学龄前儿童，为期数年，作为课程干预项目的一部分.  

他们也在尝试开发可能帮助有特殊困难的儿童的干预材料, such as in autism.

African American English
多年来，德维利尔夫妇一直致力于研究非裔美国儿童是如何获得许多非裔美国人所说的方言的特殊属性的. 他们与美国国立卫生研究院签订了一份合同，开发一种合适的语言评估测试，这种测试不会对说方言的人产生偏见, but pick out children who had language difficulties. In developing this test, they piloted many of the items on children in the Smith day care centers, though the test was standardized on over 3,000 children throughout the country. 

Language Acquisition
For all of their time at Smith, the de Villiers have studied language acquisition in the preschool years, with a focus on semantics, syntax and pragmatics. 希尔堡是一项关于儿童如何理解复杂问题的纵向研究的地点, of how they understand quantifiers like "every", of how they produce relative clauses, 条...所有这些都极大地促进了他们对英语如何发展的理解.

Picker Engineering Program

In recent years, the CECE has served as the community partner for EGR100, Engineering for Everyone, 通过参与一个学期的团队设计项目来介绍工程. 学生 develop a sound understanding of the engineering design process, including initial problem identification, brainstorming, background research, establishment of design criteria, development of metrics and methods for evaluating alternative designs, prototype development, and proof of concept testing. 学生团队与CECE的客户(老师)和用户(孩子)合作，为学龄前儿童设计体验式学习工具.

Examples of projects include:

Building Big
学龄前儿童着迷于用任何可用的材料建造大型结构. 处理和构建大型物体的行为有助于他们的权力感和自主性, and using these structures encourages creative, imaginary play while at the same time teaching them the concepts of stability, 强度, and aesthetic appreciation. 这个项目的目的是设计和制造一个建筑“工具包”，使孩子们能够安全地建造大型结构. 整套设备本身要求便携，不需要大量的存储空间.

黑暗中
A common medium for preschool children to explore is light. 这个项目的目的是在教室里建造一个物理空间，作为一个大的黑暗空间或“房间”，孩子们可以在里面探索阴影和光线的现象. 该空间需要便于携带，并允许多个孩子(和老师)同时使用.

Outdoor Studio Space
CECE的一个重要空间是艺术工作室，孩子们可以在这里探索多种艺术媒体和表达方式. In the warmer months, there is often a desire to do some of this work outside, and yet there is no good space for doing this. The CECE is currently going through a new playground redesign, 在新的操场空间将有一个区域，适合建立某种形式的户外艺术工作室. The goal of this project was to design a series of portable, 模块化, 多用途平面，为户外艺术探索提供多层次的平面空间.

Landscape Studies

During this special studies, students from four disciplines (studio art, education and child study, 工程和景观研究)在正式设计过程中合作，使希尔堡的新游乐场受益. Through charrettes and reviews, small groups worked together to design a climbing structure for toddlers; a water feature for infants to preschoolers; and storyboards illustrating and describing the rich history of the site, from Native American fort to silk cocoonery to Lyman family estate.

学生 researched the rich history of the site, did precedent analysis, learned safety regulations, learned about the development of the young child, and came to understand the pedagogical implications of the designs.

这是一个由参与的教师和访问的专业人士提供客座讲座的机会. Lectures included the evolution of playground design, materials and the structural analysis (loads, 等.) of the playground structures.