Blue Lerner
Biographic Data
| ID | 119042 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Blue Lerner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Blue |
| FAMILY NAME | Lerner |
| SIGNATURE | LERNER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5535-2132 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
STEM Media Use and Interest Development in Childhood
Can viewing educational videos through online streaming platforms (e.g., Netflix and YouTube) foster children’s interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? To address this question, parents ( N = 338) reported their 2- to 8-year-old children’s naturalistic STEM media use and STEM interests twice over a 1-month period. Children’s baseline STEM media use predicted an increase in their STEM interests over time, with a stron…
Focus on Facts, Not Fiction
Children learn more from educational television when it is paired with hands-on instruction, and the current experiment examined ways to strengthen the benefits of this pairing. Specifically, 4- to 7-year-old children at a U.S. museum (N = 120, 56.7% girls, 75.0% White) viewed an educational television program and completed a hands-on activity that varied whether it integrated two distinct components from the program: factual concepts and narrati…
How the public evaluates various sources of scientific information
This study examines six types of science, health, and medical sources, focusing on public perceptions of each source's gender, credibility, benevolence, and political affiliation. Results reveal that medical doctors were rated highest in credibility and benevolence. All of the expert sources were more likely to be reported as male, reflecting persistent stereotypes. Public health experts and academic scientists were perceived as more liberal, whe…
When Fears Come True
624 U.S. adults) was designed to approximate how well patients attend to information during a cancer-related doctor visit. To make this assessment, we manipulated mortality salience (present, absent) and language complexity (simple words, complex words) to understand whether these factors impact newly diagnosed patients' ability to attend to relevant treatment information. Message attention was measured through a comprehension quiz and a signal d…
A building block for science talk
We investigated the impact of parents' open-ended questions during collaborative science activities. Specifically, we randomly assigned 116 parents (69.8% mothers; 89.7% White) and their 4- to 7-year-old children (50.9% girls; 87.9% White) to watch science television before or after completing an engineering activity. Using sequence analysis, we examined the conversational exchanges elicited by parents' open-ended questions. Two patterns emerged:…
Framing Covid-19 Preprint Research as Uncertain
During the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists were encouraged to convey uncertainty surrounding preliminary scientific evidence, including mentioning when research is unpublished or unverified by peer review. To understand how public audiences interpret this information, we conducted a mixed method study with U.S. adults. Participants read a news article about preprint COVID-19 vaccine research in early April 2021, just as the vaccine was becoming wi…
Science terms elicit ideological differences in message processing
An experiment (N = 209) investigated whether terms about the scientific method impacted processing fluency similarly to other forms of jargon. Political ideology emerged as a significant moderator of the effects of method jargon on processing fluency. Specifically, liberals reported a more negative processing experience after exposure to the jargon condition, in line with expected general effects of jargon, while conservatives did not report a si…
Challenges to correcting pluralistic ignorance
For many policy issues, people holding the majority opinion often do not act in accordance with their beliefs. While underestimating public opinion appears as a likely cause, correcting this misperception often fails to motivate those in the majority to act. Investigating further, we surveyed a nationally representative sample (N = 1,000) of Republican voters about vaccination. Despite a majority supporting vaccines, Republicans on average undere…
Challenges to correcting pluralistic ignorance
For many policy issues, people holding the majority opinion often do not act in accordance with their beliefs. While underestimating public opinion appears as a likely cause, correcting this misperception often fails to motivate those in the majority to act. Investigating further, we surveyed a nationally representative sample (N = 1,000) of Republican voters about vaccination. Despite a majority supporting vaccines, Republicans on average undere…
Framing Covid-19 Preprint Research as Uncertain
During the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists were encouraged to convey uncertainty surrounding preliminary scientific evidence, including mentioning when research is unpublished or unverified by peer review. To understand how public audiences interpret this information, we conducted a mixed method study with U.S. adults. Participants read a news article about preprint COVID-19 vaccine research in early April 2021, just as the vaccine was becoming wi…
Science terms elicit ideological differences in message processing
An experiment (N = 209) investigated whether terms about the scientific method impacted processing fluency similarly to other forms of jargon. Political ideology emerged as a significant moderator of the effects of method jargon on processing fluency. Specifically, liberals reported a more negative processing experience after exposure to the jargon condition, in line with expected general effects of jargon, while conservatives did not report a si…
Challenges to correcting pluralistic ignorance
For many policy issues, people holding the majority opinion often do not act in accordance with their beliefs. While underestimating public opinion appears as a likely cause, correcting this misperception often fails to motivate those in the majority to act. Investigating further, we surveyed a nationally representative sample (N = 1,000) of Republican voters about vaccination. Despite a majority supporting vaccines, Republicans on average undere…
When Fears Come True
624 U.S. adults) was designed to approximate how well patients attend to information during a cancer-related doctor visit. To make this assessment, we manipulated mortality salience (present, absent) and language complexity (simple words, complex words) to understand whether these factors impact newly diagnosed patients' ability to attend to relevant treatment information. Message attention was measured through a comprehension quiz and a signal d…
A building block for science talk
We investigated the impact of parents' open-ended questions during collaborative science activities. Specifically, we randomly assigned 116 parents (69.8% mothers; 89.7% White) and their 4- to 7-year-old children (50.9% girls; 87.9% White) to watch science television before or after completing an engineering activity. Using sequence analysis, we examined the conversational exchanges elicited by parents' open-ended questions. Two patterns emerged:…
STEM Media Use and Interest Development in Childhood
Can viewing educational videos through online streaming platforms (e.g., Netflix and YouTube) foster children’s interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? To address this question, parents ( N = 338) reported their 2- to 8-year-old children’s naturalistic STEM media use and STEM interests twice over a 1-month period. Children’s baseline STEM media use predicted an increase in their STEM interests over time, with a stron…
Focus on Facts, Not Fiction
Children learn more from educational television when it is paired with hands-on instruction, and the current experiment examined ways to strengthen the benefits of this pairing. Specifically, 4- to 7-year-old children at a U.S. museum (N = 120, 56.7% girls, 75.0% White) viewed an educational television program and completed a hands-on activity that varied whether it integrated two distinct components from the program: factual concepts and narrati…
How the public evaluates various sources of scientific information
This study examines six types of science, health, and medical sources, focusing on public perceptions of each source's gender, credibility, benevolence, and political affiliation. Results reveal that medical doctors were rated highest in credibility and benevolence. All of the expert sources were more likely to be reported as male, reflecting persistent stereotypes. Public health experts and academic scientists were perceived as more liberal, whe…
Psychology (5 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (2 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Media Influence and Health (2 works) · Medicine (2 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (2 works) · Political science (2 works) · Politics (2 works) · Public health (2 works)