Who is doing that?

For children age 17 months 0 days -19 months 0 days who are being raised in a home whose primary langauge is English. Because the studies are focusing on the learning of English, we need children whose primary language is English.

In this study, your child will be introduced to pairs of people standing side-by-side and then doing different actions (e.g., sleeping or pretending to row a boat) while a narrator labels the actions, sometimes with made up words.

Our study explores how prosody (emphasis in speech) helps children interpret sentences. For example, placing emphasis on a verb (“Johnny is RUNNING”) versus on a noun (“JOHNNY is running”) can change the focus of a sentence. We aim to find out if young children pick up on these speech cues and how it shapes the information they gather.

15 minutes

As a token of appreciation, you will receive a $10 Amazon.com e-gift card within one week of participating in the study. You are eligible for this payment as long as your child meets all the eligibility criteria, you submit a valid consent recording, your child has not participated in the study before, and we can see the child with you in the video.