Baby Problem Solvers

16- to 18-month-old babies.

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you.

This study asks if babies expect characters to respond differently when they succeed versus when they fail. Your baby will see a colorful shape attempt to jump over a tall wall. On the other side of the wall will be a mat that the character wants to get to or an even larger wall that is blocking the mat. The character will either succeed in getting to the mat or fail due to the additional obstacle. Then your baby will see the character respond happily or sadly to their outcome. We will use gaze tracking to ask: Do babies expect others to be sad when they fail and happy when they succeed?

Babies expect that people will be happy when they accomplish a goal or succeed at a task, but they struggle to understand what should happen when goals are incomplete or failed. This may be a result of not having a clear reason for why an action has failed. In this study, we show babies a large obstacle that prevents a character from completing their goal and ask whether having salient information leads to clearer emotion predictions when actions are failed. This study will help us better understand how babies reason about different outcomes and how these outcomes relate to their understanding of emotions.

15 minutes

Participants will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift card. The gift card will be sent within 24 hours after the session. Only one gift card per participant and the participant must be in the age range for the study to receive the gift card.