What happens

First, you will be asked to complete a brief questionnaire about your child’s health and development to determine if they are eligible for this study. If your child is eligible, your child may be asked to participate in up to five games that test their abilities to interact with moving objects. We ask that you stay in the room while your child completes the games. We also ask that you do not help them play by making suggestions, reacting to their performance, discussing strategy, or demonstrating the games. It does not matter how well your child does each task; it is more important that they try their best. We will help your child understand the tasks by showing them pictures, demonstrating, and asking them to practice the tasks briefly.

Purpose

This study’s goal is to learn about the abilities of children with and without autism spectrum disorder to interact with moving objects. The study will investigate whether children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder perform differently than children who are typically developing in activities that involve catching, bouncing, or reacting to a moving object. If we are successful, then the results could inform future studies of autism, improve diagnosis, and may even potentially deliver therapeutic interventions that may help children improve their motor skills and other abilities.

What happens

In this study, your baby will see a series of objects and a woman who points to and communicates about the objects in American Sign Language. Then your baby will see two images at the same time and we record where they look throughout the study.

Purpose

We want to understand how babies learn categories, and the effect of language on learning processes. Previous research has found that even little babies can learn brand new categories (such as "animals" or "food"), and that their category learning gets a boost when they hear language. This study will help us understand whether babies get the same learning boost from seeing sign language. This will help us understand the flexibility that babies bring to learn about the world around them.

What happens

Your child will watch captivating videos with colorful shapes and music as well as videos of simple actions. They will hear some silly words throughout the study. We may ask your child to point to the screen, but it is okay if they do not. Either way, we will be capturing your child’s eye gaze as they watch the videos so we can tell what they are looking at.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand how toddlers and preschoolers learn language. Learning their first language is one of the most amazing achievements of early childhood and we are interested in learning how children accomplish it. This study will let us better understand what information is useful for children learning new verbs.

What happens

In this study, your baby will hear different numbers of sounds, and watch movies with different numbers of shapes in them. We are interested in how well babies can match the numbers they hear to the numbers they see.

Purpose

Can babies connect how many things they see to how many sounds they hear? And how does this ability develop over the first few months of life? We address this question by looking at how babies at different ages react to images and sounds of different quantities. Findings from this study will tell us more about how babies abstract number information from the busy and complex world around us.

What happens

In dit onderzoek zal uw baby verschillende korte video's bekijken. Eerst laten we een vrouw zien die handgebaren maakt, zoals kiekeboe spelen, of we laten draaiende tandwielen zien. Daarna zullen we twee video's naast elkaar afspelen die bewegende punten laten zien. In een van de video's lijken de punten op een persoon die in het donker beweegt, terwijl in de andere video de punten willekeurig bewegen. Naar welke video zal uw baby het liefst kijken?

Purpose

Menselijke bewegingen zijn een belangrijke bron van sociale informatie voor baby's. Baby's kunnen al heel vroeg menselijke bewegingen onderscheiden van niet-menselijke bewegingen, zelfs als de bewegingen gedeeltelijk verborgen of abstract zijn. In dit onderzoek willen we nagaan of baby's menselijke bewegingen kunnen herkennen wanneer deze worden voorgesteld door punten die overeenkomen met menselijke gewrichten die in het donker bewegen. We proberen ook te ontdekken of de context waarin baby's de bewegende punt-weergaven observeren van invloed is op hun vaardigheid. Door deze vragen te beantwoorden, zullen we meer te weten komen over hoe de sociale vaardigheden van baby's zich ontwikkelen, met name in hoeverre de herkenning van en voorkeur voor menselijke bewegingen automatisch verloopt.

What happens

In this study, your baby will hear different voices making different numbers of sounds, and watch movies with different numbers of shapes in them. We are interested in whether babies can match the numbers they hear to the numbers they see. This is a new version of "See numbers, hear numbers" - your child can participate in both if eligible!

Purpose

Can babies connect how many things they see to how many sounds they hear? And how does this ability develop over the first few months of life? We address this question by looking at how babies at different ages react to images and sounds of different quantities. Findings from this study will tell us more about how babies abstract number information from the busy and complex world around us.

What happens

In this study, your baby will see pictures of 16 different faces shown on the left and right side of the screen. In some pictures, the same person's face will be shown; in other pictures two different people will be shown. We are interested in which picture your baby prefers to look at.

Purpose

Babies learn a lot by watching our faces, and they maximize that learning by deciding where to look--they might watch a person who is currently talking, or watch for a reaction as they offer to share a treat. We are interested in how long infants pay attention to faces and how that influences whether or not they recognize someone they’ve seen before.

What happens

In this study, your child will watch a series of videos that show a room with three walls and three objects, and they will hear a label with a made-up noun. Then, your child will see two pictures side-by-side - a picture with just the walls and a picture with just the objects. They will hear the made-up noun again.

We’re interested in whether babies intuitively think that nouns refer to walls or objects. Babies tend to look longer at things that match what they hear, so we will measure how long your child looks to each picture to see if they think the novel noun refers to the walls or the objects.

Purpose

From very early on, we start naming different kinds of objects for our children, like spoons, bottles, or chairs. These names help children understand how words refer to concrete items that they encounter in everyday life. Do children instinctively think that these names refer to objects rather than parts of a layout, such as walls? This study aims to address this question. Babies hear lots of things labeled in everyday life. Learning about what babies instinctively expect noun labels to refer to will help us better understand how babies use what they hear to learn about what they see.

What happens

In this study, your baby will first be enjoying short clips of women singing a tune to them (and hopefully you'll enjoy it as well!) in English, Cantonese, or Mandarin. Then, your child will listen to a series of language sounds while looking at rainbow dots.

Purpose

During the first year of life, infants are rapidly learning their primary language(s). Previous research has shown that children use different aspects of culture as cues in this process of learning a language, and for the bilingual speaker, in keeping the two languages apart. We are looking to see whether the cultural cue of music will have an effect on the infant’s ability to differentiate between language-specific speech sounds.

What happens

Your child will be introduced to some kids at a new school, and we'll ask him or her to guess how the kids will behave toward one another - sometimes, we will ask about mean behaviors, and sometimes, we will ask about nice behaviors. For some children, the characters will be cartoon images of kids from a made-up school, and for some children, they will be real pictures of children who vary by race and gender.

Purpose

In this study, we're interested in how young children expect social groups to influence people's behavior. We know that when children are introduced to made-up groups of people, they expect people to be nice to ingroup members and mean to outgroup members. Here, we want to know if children have these same expectations for other kinds of groups, like race and gender. To test this question, we ask children to predict how people are going to act toward one another, and we vary whether the different characters share membership in various social groups (gender, race, and made-up groups). Do children think that people will favor members of their own group? Your child's responses can teach scientists about how these expectations develop across childhood, which can inform future efforts at encouraging children to be nice to others, no matter who they are.