Welcome to Villanova’s Scientific Thinking and Representation (STAR) Lab!

We study children’s and adults’ imaginative and scientific reasoning abilities.


Our projects ask:

✿ How do children learn from fictional stories? What aspects of their books or videos help or hinder their learning?
✿ How do fictional stories affect adults’ lives? Can reading books or watching videos make adults more empathetic or creative?
✿ How do children learn to think scientifically – and why are adults sometimes bad at thinking scientifically?

The participants in these studies are children and adults from our community, recruited in partnership with local schools and other collaborators. Please explore our website to find out more about our research team and the research we do.
You can get in touch with us at 610-519-7588 or at starlab@villanova.edu.