Multilingual, Exposure, and Social Groups

For 5- to 7- year olds

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
A live researcher will tell your child a short story of two islands and two groups people living there. Your child will then classify a target (a child) presented to them on the screen into the groups. We are interested in seeing how much your child thinks the target presented on the screen belongs to the different groups, based on the languages that the target speaks.

Previous research shows that children use language to categories people into different social groups. We are interested in understanding how children would classify a bilingual target presented to them, into the two language groups that the target can communicate in. Do children think that the target belongs partly to each group, or can they simultaneously belong to both groups completely? This study will help further our understanding of language as a marker of social groups, and whether the child’s own experience with linguistic diversity (being monolingual or bilingual) changes how they achieve this categorization.

15 minutes

Online participation of this study will be compensated in the form of a $3 Tango gift card sent to your email within 2 weeks as long as they meet the eligibility criteria.

The Eligibility criteria are:
1) Child needs to be in the age range
2) Child needs to be visible
3) Only one gift card is given per child