Animals Hide and Seek!

For babies aged 7.0 to 8.5 months who learn English as their first language and who reside in the United States

In this study, you will be asked to fill out a short survey where you will indicate from a list of words which ones your baby understands and says. Then, your baby will watch a short video filled with cute, stuffed animals and hear names for these animals (like "dax"). Then, the animals will hide behind a screen, and your baby will watch as the screen is then raised. We will record how interested your baby is in looking at what animal comes out from behind the screen. Lastly, your child will watch short videos testing their memory of colorful shapes.

We are interested in how well babies remember which objects they have seen, and whether they remember better if the object (like a particular dog) was given its own name. Babies pay close attention to what we say to them, even before they can produce their own words. This tells us that how we name objects for them can already guide how they think about these objects. Here, we are asking if babies can remember that an object is the same one even after it disappears and then reappears, and whether the way we name the object influences how well they remember it.

15 minutes

$5 Amazon.com gift card. After you participate in the study, we will email you an Amazon.com gift card within 1 week. To be eligible for compensation, the following criteria must be met: (1) your child must be in the age range for this study and be learning English as his/her first language; (2) you must be located in the United States; (3) you need to submit a valid video consent statement; (4) we need to see that there is a child with you in the study participation video. You can only receive compensation for this study once per child.