Hi / Salut / Namaste! My parent’s friends are my friends

For 4- to 5-year-old children based in the U.S. Your child must be within this age range on the day of your study appointment.
Your child must be primarily exposed to English 90-100% of the time to be eligible for this study. If your child is exposed to any other languages (for example if they interact regularly with people who speak another language), it should ideally be minimal, or less than 10% of the time.
Your child must not have participated in this study or “Hi / Salut / Namaste! Which puppet would you prefer as your friend?” before, in order to be eligible

Before your appointment, you will be asked to film and send us a short, 15-second video of yourself that will be edited and shown to your child during the study. To schedule the appointment click on “Schedule a time to participate” to see an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. During the scheduled time, your child will watch pairs of puppets speaking different languages and will be asked which one they would prefer to have as their friend. They will also be shown edited videos of you, their caregiver, and another adult interacting with these puppets and will be asked a few questions about the puppets.

This is a follow-up to a study that found that children prefer characters that speak the same language as them. This study aims to explore whether children overcome this language bias when they see adults interacting with characters that speak a different language to them. This is important for understanding children’s friendship preferences based on language, and exploring ways to build linguistic diversity.

15 minutes

Children will receive a $5 gift card for Amazon.com and certificate of participation within 3 days of participating over Zoom. To receive the gift card and certificate, your child must be 4 or 5 years old and a monolingual English-speaker (exposed to English 90-100% of the time). Also, your child must be visible at some point in the appointment, and we will only award one gift card per child. Compensation is not dependent on your child’s performance in or completion of the study tasks.