Alien phone call!

Children aged between 4.5 years (4 years, 6 months) and 6.5 years (6 years, 5 months) living in North America.

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. Your child will play a game where they help two aliens have a phone call! Rilo the alien wants to tell us all about his adventures on Earth, but his sentences sometimes get cut off by the bad signal! Your child's job will be to guess what the last word in the sentence was.

In this study, we are interested in what children understand about how certain words change what could come next in a sentence. We already know that when we are understanding language (for example, during a conversation), we make predictions about which words might come next. This task asks children to tell us what they think the next word in a sentence might be. We are interested in their ability to understand what they just heard, then use this information to guess what could come next, choosing from all the words that they know. This study is interesting because it lets us look at whether certain words make prediction more difficult for children.

20 minutes

You will receive a $5 Amazon.com voucher for your participation. To take part, your child must be aged 4.5-6.5 years, and must speak English. To receive compensation, you must join the video call and have your child be visible on the screen. Only one gift card per participant. You will receive compensation within 3 working days of completing the study.