Who knows what?

We invite children with a variety of language skills, including autism spectrum disorder or language delay. The age range is 3 to 10 years.

Your child will help a cartoon narrator find gemstones that are hidden behind different pictures. Each time a gemstone is hidden behind a picture, two characters (a panda and a pig) will give different clues, and your child will tell the narrator which character gave the better clue. There are some short breaks in this game, during which your child will play other games in which someone has a false belief (e.g., thinking a toy is in one location when it is in another) and will be asked questions about what the person thinks compared to what is really happening. After the study is done, we will email you access to QUILS, a web-based tool to assess your child’s language skills. Some selected parents will then have the option to enter a training phase in which you will read special books to your child over a few weeks.

We are interested in the relationship between the child’s language and their cognitive development, in particular, how they reason about other people’s minds. In everyday life, and in stories, we take into account what other people know and think and want, and children are learning to do this over the first few years of life. We think their language helps them reason in this way. But we don't yet know which aspect of language makes the difference: is it mastering the more complex sentences, or and if so, what kind? We are trying to test some alternatives in this study to build on what is already known. The answers can make a difference in how we teach children with problems in this area.

30 minutes

We will email parents within a week with a Junior Scientist certificate for your child, if we have an approved consent video and the child is in the right age range. We will also send you access for your child to do an online language screener (15-20 mins), and you can see the results for your child in three areas critical to language development and later academic success. Some of the children will then be selected for a training study with parents reading books, and we will let you know if your child qualifies and ask you for further consent for that phase within a week or two of doing the language screener.