How Babies Learn from What They See AND Hear at the Same Time

1) Age: 6 months (± 2 weeks) or 12 months (± 3 weeks),
2) Language Exposure: Should hear English spoken at home at least 70% of the time

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. For this study, you will need a tape measure and two sticky notes.
In this study, children and parents will join a 45-minute Zoom call with the research team. We will ask you to measure the distance from the screen to ensure that all children in the study are positioned at the same distance from the computer. We will also ask you to sit outside of your child’s view or cover your eyes with sticky notes. We ask this because you will be playing an “at-home experimenter” role, and it is important that caregivers remain blind to the study conditions.
Your baby will watch short videos of moving objects or people speaking while we observe where they look on the screen. Some videos will show two or six women telling a story. Others will include objects. In the object videos, small colorful items (such as tokens, cubes, or dice) will drop into two jars, or six different objects will appear. After each short video, babies will see a smiling face or a moving ball.
In this study, we explore how babies pay attention to things they see and hear at the same time. While babies see multiple objects or people on the screen, they hear a single sound that matches only one of them. By observing where babies look, we examine whether they pay more attention to the matching object or person, and whether this differs between social (people) and non-social (objects) situations.

Researchers have found that babies learn better by combining information from different senses, such as seeing and hearing at the same time. This ability is called multisensory processing, and it may play an important role in how children develop language and social skills. However, we still know little about how these skills develop during the first years of life and how early differences may relate to later development. In this study, we explore how babies pay attention to things they see and hear at the same time, such as moving objects or people speaking. By observing where babies look while watching short videos, we aim to understand more about how these early attention skills relate to later language and social development.

45 minutes

Participants will receive $10 compensation within 2 weeks after the session. To be eligible for compensation, babies must be between 1 and 13 months old. Compensation will be provided via Venmo, Zelle, or an Amazon.com e-gift card.