Do babies have special expectations about human beings?

8- to 10-month-old

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. We will show your baby a series of short videos showing either many identical people or many different people entering a room one by one, or a number of identical or different toys placed on a table one by one. We are interested in how your baby reacts to these videos.

As adults, we can easily recognize that artifacts (such as your coffee mugs) can look identical to each other, whereas it is rare for human beings to look identical to each other. In this study, we are interested in whether young babies also hold such expectations. Our hypothesis is that babies will be surprised by seeing multiple identical people, but not by seeing multiple identical objects. If so, this will tell us that babies hold special expectations about people from early in life.

15 minutes

Each participant who is in the required age range will receive a $5 gift card from Amazon.com within two weeks of completing the study.