Welcome to DevStart
Getting Started with Developmental Cognitive Science
DevStart, developmental cognitive science, PhD, research methods, data analysis,programming, neuroscience, psychology, developmental research, developmental science
What is this?
DevStart is an online hands-on manual for anyone who is approaching developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience for the first time, from master’s students and PhDs to postdocs.
Assuming no a priori knowledge, this website will guide you through your first steps as a developmental researcher. You’ll find many examples and guidelines on how to grasp the basic principles of developmental psychology research, design and set up a study with different research methods, analyse data, and start programming.
Core principles
DevStart is built on three guiding principles that reflect our approach to developmental research.
We’re committed to open source tools and aim to only use software that is freely available to everyone. Academia is already difficult enough without financial barriers - we want to reduce the impact of money on research and ensure that good science isn’t limited by budget constraints.
Our resources are completely free to use because we believe knowledge should be accessible to all researchers regardless of their funding situation.
Most importantly, we see ourselves as a knowledge hub rather than the authority on “best practices.” We don’t have all the answers, just hard-earned solutions from our own research journeys. What worked for us might need tweaking for you, and we welcome those contributions. After all, developmental research is as much about collaboration as it is about discovery.
Why did we create it?
There are many resources on the web to learn how to program, build experiments, and analyse data. However, they often assume basic skills in programming, and they don’t tackle the challenges that we encounter when testing babies and young children. This knowledge is often handed down from Professors and Postdocs to PhD students, or it is acquired through hours and hours of despair.
We tried to summarize all the struggles that we encountered during our PhDs and the solutions we came up with. With this website, we aim to offer you a solution to overcome these problems, and we invite anyone to help us and contribute to this open science framework!
How to contribute?
If you’re an expert on a specific topic and you want to change something or add something, if you don’t agree with our pipeline, or you spot an error in our code, please let us know!
There are different ways you can contribute:
GitHub: You can fork the repository, make your changes, and submit a pull request. This is the best way to contribute code or documentation updates.
Forum Discussions: We are starting a dedicated forum where you can ask questions, share ideas, and discuss topics related to developmental research. This is a great place to connect with other researchers and get feedback on your work. Please join the forum and start a discussion if you have any questions or suggestions. We will be happy to help you!
Email: If you prefer, you can email us with your suggestions or corrections. We welcome any feedback that can help improve DevStart. You can find us at:
T.ghilardi@bbk.ac.uk , Francesco.Poli@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk, G.serino@bbk.ac.uk
Who are we?
Our story began in 2018 at the Donders Institute in the Netherlands. Tommaso and Francesco were in the midst of their PhDs when Giulia joined them, seeking data for her master’s thesis. What started as a research collaboration quickly grew into a lasting partnership. We share a passion for developmental science and each bring our own approach to the table.
Tommaso is our programmer in love with R, Python and anything methodological. Francesco is our deep thinker, focused on theory development and creating computational models to explain behavioral patterns. Giulia brings creativity to our experiments, blending scientific rigor with visual design. Over the years, we’ve continued collaborating across institutions, finding that our different strengths complement each other.
DevStart emerged from our research journeys - the challenges we faced and the solutions we discovered along the way
Warnings!
We tried our best to offer the best and most accurate solutions. However, do always check the code and if the outputs make sense. Please get in touch if you spot any errors.
We apologize in advance for our poor coding skills. Our scripts are not perfect, and they don’t mean to be. But, as Francesco always says, they work! And we hope they will support you during your PhD.