Which alien wants to stay silent?

For English-speaking children 4 to 9 years of age

You and your child will see and hear six short stories about aliens. In each story, three out of five aliens will be talking about a specific topic. Children will then hear  the thoughts of the remaining two aliens about the topic. Next, your child will be asked which of these two aliens does not want to share what they are thinking out loud.

This study explores how children reason about the use of silence in social conversations. Prior research shows that children can draw rich inferences from speech disfluencies (such as "uhh" or "umm") in social interactions. In this study, we're curious about the inferences children can draw from silence. More specifically, we're interested in whether children can anticipate the use of silence based on an agent's thoughts. At the end of the study, we will discuss the hypotheses and predictions in detail. Please do not talk to your child about what the study is about until the end of the study.

15 minutes

We will email you a $5 Amazon.com gift card within ten days. To be eligible for the gift card, (1) your child must be in the age range for this study, (2) English is (one of) your child's first language(s), (3) you need to submit a valid consent statement, and (4) we need to see that there is a child with you during the experiment. If you or your child do not wish to complete the entire study or for some reason we are unable to use your child's data, we will still send you and your child a gift card. Each child is eligible to participate to receive a gift card only once.