How Far Does a New Word Go?

For 18- to 24-month-olds who are living in the United States of America.

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. Your baby will see a short video of a person pointing to either one or three novel shapes (similar to the novel shape shown in the cover photo of this study) while labeling these shapes with a novel word. Where your child looks during the video will tell us about how far your child has generalized the novel word. This allows us to better understand how the number of examples of a novel object label an infant sees impacts how far they generalize that label.

We know from previous research that American children and adults are less certain about how far to generalize a novel object label when shown only one example as compared to when shown three identical examples. This study will explore whether American infants also show this same pattern. If infants’ generalization is similar to children and adults, this study may provide evidence for the idea that these learning mechanisms may be an innate part of human cognition.

15 minutes

To receive compensation for this study, the child needs to be in the age range, and the child needs to be visible at the time of the study. We provide compensation only once per child. You will receive a gift card from Amazon.com within one week of your participation in this study.