Let's Visit the Word Learning Library!

For 4- to 6-year-olds who are learning English at home. Participants must be located in the United States and hearing English speech at least 40% of the time. Each child may only participate in this study once.

In this study, your child will see many familiar objects, some labeled with familiar English-language words and some labeled with a made-up new word. We will go through three different picture books and afterwards, play a pointing game. We will ask your kid to point to the objects they see on the screen, and for you to select the option they pointed to on the screen. Afterwards, there will be some quick questions about your child and their exposure to different languages.

Lots of the words we use every day are associated with more than a single meaning. We are interested in learning more about children's understanding of labeling and categorizing polysemes, which are words that can have many meanings. An example of a polyseme is how the word "cap" can stand for a baseball cap or a pen cap, yet the word will apply to both! We will show kids some polysemous objects that have some sort of shared traits to see if kids can apply one word to multiple objects that match. Our study aims to examine how kids use relationships of word meanings to help support their understanding of polysemous objects!

15 minutes

As a token of appreciation, you will receive a $5 Amazon.com e-gift card within 2 weeks of completing the study. You are eligible for this payment if your child meets all the eligibility criteria, is present in the Consent Video at the start of the study, and has not participated in the study before.