Letters from the North Pole

For children 4.5 to 6.5 years old who are monolingual speakers of American English.

In the first part of the study, your child will watch a video of made up text (“letters” sent from Beary the bear to Pingu the penguin), while a made-up language plays in the background. Your child’s task will be to press the spacebar whenever the text turns red while the audio of the language plays (5 mins).

Afterward, your child will listen to some made up words and will be asked to repeat them out loud (8 mins). Then, they will hear the names of letters and will be asked to click on the corresponding letter on the screen (3 mins)

Finally, we will show your child a set of real and made up words, and ask them to read as many as they can before the list disappears (4 mins). It is okay if your child is not yet able to read: we are interested in testing pre-literate children as well as those who have started reading.

Once your child is finished with the study, we will ask you (the caretaker) to fill out a brief survey about reading habits (e.g., how often your household engages in reading-related activities).

We are interested in discovering the kinds of information that children pick up on when they first encounter a new language. Children are incredibly fast learners, and can pick up an a lot of new information very quickly, even after just a few minutes! We are specifically interested in finding out whether children are able to learn new words through mere exposure to language in their environment.

Note: if you run the study on a Macbook and have an Iphone, please use the Macbook microphone for the study (newer Mac updates may try to automatically connect to your Iphone mic). You can configure this in the study audio set up settings, and/or turn off you Iphone's Bluetooth to ensure the study uses your Macbook mic.

20 minutes. We ask that you remain with your child for the duration of the study. Once you launch the study, the link will expire after 24 hours.

You will be messaged a $5 Amazon.com e-gift card within 3 weeks of your participation. Your child must be eligible for the study: meaning that they are between the ages of 4.5 to 6.5 years of age and are monolingual speakers of American English who have no experience with other languages. Since this is a language study in which we expose children to made-up words, we want to control for linguistic background to ensure that no prior knowledge interferes (e.g., some made-up words may resemble words from other languages, potentially making the task easier for certain children and compromising our control over this factor). Since the study can only be conducted once, it is crucial to account for this in advance. You can only do the study once.