The secret language of penguins

For children 7 to 9 years old who are monolingual speakers of American English.

While watching the silent penguin movie, your child will hear a set of background sounds. These sounds are actually a special language that will be unfamiliar to your child and may at times be a bit annoying to listen to. However, we are interested in what aspects of this special language your child learns.

In this study, we are interested in discovering the kinds of information that children pick up on when they first encounter a new language. Children are incredibly fast learners, and can pick up an a lot of new information very quickly, even after just a few minutes! We are specifically interested in finding out whether children are able to learn new words through mere exposure to language in their environment. By participating, you and your child will help us uncover important information about how much kids are able to learn just by hearing language, even when they are not explicitly paying attention to what's being said.

30 minutes

You will be messaged a $5 Amazon.com e-gift card within 3 weeks of your participation. Your child must be eligible for the study: meaning ghat they are between the ages of 7 and 9 years of age and are monolingual speakers of American English who have no experience with other languages. Since this is a language study in which we expose children to made-up words, we want to control for linguistic background to ensure that no prior knowledge interferes (e.g., some made-up words may resemble words from other languages, potentially making the task easier for certain children and compromising our control over this factor). Since the study can only be conducted once, it is crucial to account for this in advance. You can only do the study once.