Let's Look at the Dots!

For 10-12 month olds

Your child will see 10 trials of dots appearing over time on the screen. During the study you will press the spacebar key to terminate trials when your baby looks away for 3 seconds.

How do infants interpret structured visual patterns? We already know that in the first year of life, infants track conditional probabilities and learn higher-order rules in both visual and auditory domains, and are sensitive to both the continuous extent and approximate number of elements in an array. However, just as infants can track the approximate number of objects in a set without any understanding of what "number" is, an implicit sensitivity to structure need not entail an abstract, domain general ability to reason about structures patterns. We are interested in whether babies expect that patterns take simple forms, like lines and curves. This may ultimately help explain the origin of abstract thought.

7-10 minutes for the study part; 15 minutes with study and set up

Families will receive a $5 Amazon (Amazon.com) gift card after completing the study. You will receive your gift card within one week of participation. To be eligible for the gift card, your child must be in the age range for this study, you need to provide verbal consent, and we need to see that there is a child with you. Only one gift card per child is available.