Lights, Camera, Action Verbs!

For children that are 30 to 36 months old (2.5 to 3 years old), who are learning English at home.

In this study, on each trial, your baby will see two images of objects or video clips on the screen -- one on the left and one on the right, and hear a sentence. The video clips capture a variety of novel actions, some of which involves one person acting upon the other person - e.g., rolling them, bending them, lifting their arms, etc. We are interested in which of the two actions your child looks at more.

Learning verbs can be a difficult task for kids: a lot of different events happen around us at any one time. So when they hear a new verb, it may not be immediately obvious what it means. One of the clues that kids can use to guess the meaning of that verb is the sentence context: if they hear “she’s *calling* your uncle,” they can figure out that “calling” involves 2 people. But we don’t know how well kids remember this information. In this study, we are interested in how kids use these clues as they hear a verb multiple times, in different contexts. This study will help us understand what information is most useful to kids as they are learning verbs.

15 minutes

Within 2 weeks after you participate in this study, we will email you a $5 Amazon gift card for Amazon.com. To be eligible for the gift card: 1) you need to be located in the US, 2) your child must be in the age range for this study, 3) you need to submit a valid consent statement, and 4) we need to see that there is a child with you. You and your child do not need to finish the whole study to receive the gift card. Each child can only participate in this study once.