CCC

Full name:

Culture, Childhood and Cognition: How Parental and Grandparental Beliefs Shape Child Development in the 21st Century

Appointment of the team:

2025

The Culture, Childhood and Cognition (CCC) project investigates how parents and grandparents understand children’s development. The research group focuses on how different generations understand children’s needs, the caregiving practices they adopt, and how they perceive their role in children’s development and well-being.

Research will be conducted across three cultural contexts – Poland, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong.

By combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, the project aims to deepen understanding of intergenerational family relationships and their importance for the well-being of all generations, while identifying both cultural differences and universal patterns in beliefs about child development. The findings will also contribute to a better understanding of the role of family relationships in increasingly ageing societies.

Team Leader

Portrait placeholder

Marta Białecka

Bio:

Marta Białecka is a Full Professor at NCU’s Department of Cognitive and Comparative Psychology, the Institute of Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. She is the author of over 50 publications (as of June 2026) in developmental psychology. Recently, she has been the main editor of the first Polish handbook Developmental Science. Introduction. Professor Białecka is the Head of the Child Communication Lab (CCLab, www.cclab.umk.pl) at the Institute of Psychology, and from 2025 also the Polish leader of the Multilateral Academic Project, titled “A study of the developmental trajectories of honesty and dishonesty in children across different cultural and educational contexts”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, carried out as part of a consortium with Switzerland and Romania. Her research interests include the development of social cognition, including communication and theory of mind during childhood and adolescence, children’s lying and deceptive behaviours; the development of cooperation and self-awareness; as well as critical thinking from the developmental perspective.

Meet the research team

Portrait of Magdalena Szmytke

Magdalena Szmytke

Portrait of Anna Karczmarczyk

Anna Karczmarczyk

Portrait of Joanna Płotnikowska

Joanna Płotnikowska

Portrait of Lidia Wiśniewska-Nogaj

Lidia Wiśniewska-Nogaj

Portrait of Katarzyna Suwada

Katarzyna Suwada

Portrait of Joanna Cieślikowska

Joanna Cieślikowska