Let's see Elmo and Grover play with their friends

Let's see Elmo and Grover play with their friends

Early Childhood Cognition Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT))

Who Can Participate

For 6- to 7-year-olds

What Happens

In this study, you and your child will watch a few short videos of Elmo and Grover learning about toys, reading stories, and talking with adults. Your child will be asked to choose the person they think Elmo and Grover would like to play with more. At the very end, they will be asked why they made the choice they did and a check question.

What We're Studying

We are interested in the extent to which young children track adults' attention. Here, we are especially interested in contexts where the child themselves is not the focus of the attention; rather, they are watching the adult interact with someone else. At the end of the study, we will discuss the hypotheses and predictions in detail. Please do not talk to your child about what the study is about until the end of the study.

Duration

20 minutes

Compensation

You can only participate in this study once for compensation. After you finish the study, we will email you a $5 Amazon gift card within approximately five days. To be eligible for the gift card, (1) your child must be in the age range for this study, (2) your child speaks English, (3) you need to submit a valid consent statement, (4) we need to see that there is a child with you during the experiment, (5) one child can only participate in the study once for compensation, and (6) a child who has participated in the previous version of this study ("Let's play with Elmo and his friends", "Help Elmo and Grover", "Helping Elmo and Grover") is not eligible for participating this study.

This study is conducted by Shengyi Wu (shengyiw@mit.edu).

Would you like to participate in this study?