What did she say?

5-year-olds with typical hearing who are exposed to both English and another language, each at least 30% of the time

In this study, your child will watch videos of a dragon saying sentences. After each sentence is said, they will be asked to repeat what they heard. Some of the sentences may be more difficult to hear, either by being presented in noise, or by being distorted in some manner.

You may also be asked to participate in a short 20-minute structured conversation, via a phone call or Zoom, about your child's language exposure.

Previous research has shown that children have more difficulty understanding speech in background noise than adults, but it is not yet clear why. This study seeks to examine how a certain auditory illusion may relate to this phenomenon. When parts of words are removed and fully replaced by noise, adults report hearing the whole words, with no gaps. Because they have a strong expectation of what the word was, their brain fills in the missing information, as if the noise had overlapped those parts rather than replacing them. We are interested in whether children also display this auditory illusion and how this develops, especially in varying language backgrounds.

30 minutes

Families will receive a $5 USD credit on Tango (tangocard.com) for participating, which is redeemable for a gift card from your choice of a variety of major retailers. Based on your responses in the study, you may also be asked to participate in a 20-minute structured conversation about your child's language exposure. Families who participate in this conversation will receive an additional $3 USD Tango credit. To be eligible for compensation, your child must be in the age range for this study, you need to submit a valid consent statement, and we need to see that there is a child with you. You will still receive compensation even if you do not finish the whole study or if we are unable to use your child's data. If you have multiple children in the age range for this study, you can receive compensation once per child. You will be asked to provide your email address during the study, which is required to receive compensation if you are eligible. You will receive your Tango credit via email within 10 days of participation.