Let's Listen to a New Language!

For babies aged 5 to 9 months residing in the United States. Because this study is testing language exposure, your baby should be learning English as their first language. They should hear at least 75% English in a typical day.

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. In this study, you will first fill out a short survey about you and your baby, such as demographics and your child's language experience. Then, your baby will listen to a 3 minute story in German. After that, they will see images of objects (such as dinosaurs and fish) while listening to a phrase in German. We will measure their looking time to see if the German speech helps them to form an object category.

We are interested in how nonnative language exposure influences how infants learn from nonnative languages. At this age without any prior exposure, a nonnative language like German does not boost English-learning infants' cognitive abilities, such as the ability to form an object category. We are testing whether a few minutes of exposure to German will lead infants to learn from German on the object categorization task that follows. This will provide exciting insights into the power of language exposure on nonnative language learning and early cognitive development.

20 minutes

$10 Amazon gift card. After you participate, we will email you a Amazon gift card (redeemable at Amazon.com only) within 1 week. To be eligible for compensation (1) your child must be in the age range for this study, be learning English as their first language, and hearing at least 75% English; (2) You must be located in the United States; (3) you must provide a valid video consent statement during our scheduled Zoom session; (4) your child must be present at the scheduled Zoom session. You can receive compensation for this study only once per child.