Helping Chloe talk about small and large collections

4-year-olds who predominantly or only speak English

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 the call, our researcher will introduce your child to a toy “friend.” We will then look at pictures of objects in various colors (for example, balls that are blue or purple), and our friend will describe the pictures using words like "some" and "all". Your child will be asked to tell our friend whether descriptions were right or wrong.

There are many ways that language can be used to talk about multiple objects, like “some," "all," "most," and "three." We know from existing research know that even children as old as 7 have not mastered the nuances of these words. In this study, we are interested in how the visual features of scenes affect how children understand the word, "some." We think that how objects are grouped together will affect whether children understand "some" to mean "a few" or "some but not all." The results from this study will help us understand how children's understanding of quantity-related words develops during childhood.

15 minutes

Within two weeks you will be sent a $5 gift card to Target or Amazon.com. You will be compensated even if your child is unable to complete the whole study. However, we cannot compensate unless you attend the Zoom call with an age appropriate child whose only or predominant language is English, and we cannot compensate the participation of a single child more than once.