# Related work

Studies by Burcu Ünlütabak and collaborators on learning, social understanding, family beliefs, and interactions with artificial agents.

## Children and social robots

In a 2025 study, Burcu Ünlütabak and Duygun Erol Barkana examined how children asked a social robot about unfamiliar animals and objects. This journal article acknowledges the same TÜBİTAK 3501 grant as the voice assistant preprint.

[Journal record](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2025.100751) · [TÜBİTAK project](/research/child-inquiry-project.md)

## Parenting beliefs and children’s questions

Ünlütabak’s 2026 preprint reports the development of a measure of parents’ beliefs about children’s questions. It examines how those beliefs relate to what children ask and how parents respond. The APS program also lists this work as a conference poster.

[Preprint record](https://sciety.org/articles/activity/10.31234/osf.io/xm8hc_v1) · [APS poster abstract](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/conventions/archive/2026annual/paper/60675/)

## How Turkish preschoolers ask questions

In a 2019 journal article, Ünlütabak, Ageliki Nicolopoulou, and Ayhan Aksu-Koç examined how Turkish preschoolers from middle- and low-income families asked about unfamiliar animals and objects. Children sought information more often when they received informative answers.

[Journal record](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100802) · [Full text shared by the authors](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333903418_Questions_asked_by_Turkish_preschoolers_from_middle-SES_and_low-SES_families)

## Children’s questions about COVID-19

One study by Ünlütabak and İlayda Velioğlu examined what children in Türkiye asked about COVID-19 and how their parents answered. A separate study by Ünlütabak and colleagues compared children’s questions and teachers’ responses in Türkiye and the United States.

[Parent study full text](https://gcris.khas.edu.tr/server/api/core/bitstreams/4a76e060-d951-4da8-9ba8-9a3d8bd8553b/content) · [Teacher study full text](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307475)

## Literary reading, empathy, and mentalisation

Onur Bal’s 2025 master’s thesis examined associations between literary reading, empathy, and mentalisation in adults. Burcu Ünlütabak supervised the thesis. The 2026 APS program lists Bal and Ünlütabak as coauthors of the related poster, _Canonical Feelings: Literary Fiction Predicts Empathy but Not Mentalisation_.

[Thesis archive](https://onurbal.com/en/academics/thesis/) · [Yeditepe supervision record](https://yeditepe.edu.tr/en/academic-staff/2897) · [APS poster program](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/conventions/archive/2026annual/session/14144/)

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