Current Studies

We are currently running studies with 4-, 5-, 8-, 11-, 14-, 16-, 18-, 20-, 22-, 24-, and 26-month-olds.

Sticky Mittens:

Can infants who pick up balls with velcro mittens learn about causality earlier?

In this study your baby will be given toy balls to play with while wearing mittens, and then watch a video. The mittens your infant will wear may or may not have Velcro on them. If the mittens have Velcro on them, this makes it easier for your child to pick up the balls and interact with them. What we are interested in seeing is whether the experience with being able to pick up the balls helps infants to form an understanding of how one object can act on another, causing it to move (we call this causality).

When an infant is shown something over and over again, the amount of time he or she is willing to look at that stimulus goes down. By showing your child a video of one circle hitting another repeatedly, we can see how infants compare this causal action to other images with circles by how long your baby looks at the different images.

This study is currently being conducted with 4- and 5-month olds

Deduction, Deduction Static (Deduction-S):

Can infants deduce correlations between the looks of images and their type of motion?

If infants learn that things with legs walk, and that things with legs have eyes, the connection can be made that things with eyes walk. This study aims to determine whether or not infants can engage in this kind of reasoning.

Your baby will be shown videos of a square and a circle, each doing a specific motion (bouncing or jumping). Your infant will also be shown still images of a square and circle. One of the shapes has a cross on it, and the other will have a heart on it. We will show your infant these images over and over again until he or she learns them, and is no longer interested in looking at them.

After your baby learns these images, we will show him or her three more pictures. Two were new muffin shapes, one with a cross on it and one with a heart on it, and they will each be either bouncing or jumping. The third image was either a circle or a square engaging in a different motion than your child previously saw.

Once infants learn the kind of motion that goes with a shape, and the kind of picture (cross or heart) associated with that shape, we are interested in knowing at what age infants can make the connection between the picture on the shape and the motion of the shape. Depending on how long your infant looks at these last three images, we can determine the age group that can use this kind of deductive reasoning.

This study is currently being conducted with 8-, 11-, 14-, 20-, and 26-month-olds

Generalizing Agency and Self Propulsion (GASP):

Do infants expect self-propelled objects to always be self-propelled and static objects to always be static?

In this study your infant will watch a video in which either a colored square bumps into another square, causing it to move, or a single colored square begin to move on its own. After your baby watches these movies many times, we will show him or her a video of the square moving in new ways. If your baby is first shown the single square moving on its own, he or she will be shown a movie in which the square bumps into a different square, causing it to move, and a second movie where these roles are reversed. If your baby sees the bumping movies first, he or she will be shown both the "bumper" and "bumpee" move on their own.

We are interested in how long your baby looks at these these new events: Are babies surprised when things that formerly moved on their own now need to be pushed into motion, and vice versa? Do they expect things that move in the same way that people and animals do to always move in the same way?

This study is currently being conducted with 14-month-olds

Paired Associations with Predators (PAP):

Will infants learn emotional responses associated with predators more quickly than with non-predators?

In this study your infant will be shown an image of a potentially harmful animal (a snake or a spider) or a non-threatening object (a flower or mushroom) paired with either a happy or sad face. We will then show your child a pairing they had not seen before: for example, a flower with a smiling gace if they had previously seen a snake with a smiling face.

We are examining whether infants learn more quickly to associate an emotion with harmful animals then with non-threatening objects. If so, this would provide evidence that humans are "prepared" by evolution to quickly learn the appropriate emotional resonses to certain stimuli.

This study is currently being conducted with 11-month-olds

Attention ot Parts in Object Learning (APOL):

How do infants label objects?

In this study your infant will be shown some toys that he or she has never seen before. An example toy will be given a name and your baby will be asked to hand the experimenter toys that would be labeled with the same name. By the order your child hands the toys to the experimenter, we can determine how infants label objects at different ages. Do infants label objects with the same parts as the same? With the same number of parts? With the same body? This teaches us how infants begin to learn the names of objects in the world.

This study is currently being conducted with 16-month-olds

Causal Chain Agency with Moving Parts (CAMP):

Do infants understand agents with moving parts in causal chains?

Previous studes have shown that infants at the age of 16 months think objects that can mobe other objects have mobing parts. This is because agents of action have moving parts. Studies also show that at 15 months infants think the first object in a chain of action is the cause of the final action (rather than the object immeduatly before the final action). This rationalization can be explained in terms of a domino effect - by 15 months, infants think that the very first domino in the chain is what causes the final domino to fall, whereas at younger ages infants think the domino right before the final domino is what causes it to fall.

This study combines these two ideas by showing infants a chain of actions. One object moves onto the screen, bumping another which mobes and hits a box. When the box is hit, something pops out of it. If infants think that the first object is the cause of these actions, we believe they should also expect the first object to have moving parts. By showing your child a video over and over again of a chain of actions with one of the figures in the chain having a moving part, and then switching the object with the moving part, we can learn at what age infants make the connection between the moving part and the idea that the first object is the cause of the final action.

This study is currently being conducted with 18- and 22-month-olds

Robots and People (RAP), Robots and People Switched (RAP-S):

Do infants expect robots and people to move toward goals?

In this study your infant will see a board with two toys at the end of it. The experimenter will show your infant an action with either a robot or a person moving towards one of the two toys. The positions of the toys are switched and your child will then be asked to mimic this action.

We are interested in seeing if your child moves the robots and people to the same objects as the experimenter or towards the same side. By which toy your child moves the robot or person to, we can learn how infants understand which things move toward goals and which do not.

This study is currently being conducted with 18- and 22-month-olds.

Generalizing Motion (GM):

Do infants think objects with certain kinds of motion are goal directed?

In this study your infant will be shown several ambiguous-looking clay figures that either hop up and down or roll back and forth. The experimenter moves these hopping and rolling figures to one of two toys at the end of a board. The positions of the toys will then be switched and your child will be asked to imitate the experimenter's action.

We are interested in seeing if your child moves the hopping and rolling figures to the same toy as the experimenter or towards the same location. By obsercing to which toy your child moves the hopping and rolling figures, we can learn how infants understand which kinds of things in the world have goals and pursue the same objects, and which do not. Do infants understand that entities that hop up and down, such as animals and people, also move toward goals? Similarly, do infants know that things that roll, such as balls and strollers, tend to not move toward the same objects repeatedly?

This study is currently being conducted with 20- and 26-month olds

Parts or Whole (POW):

How do babies know what has the ability to cause other things to move? Is it legs?

In this study your infant will be given two toys to play with. The experimenter will show your baby an action with a colored block hitting a toy piece of furniture, and then the furniture moving after being hit. Then we will give your infant the ability to choose between two different toys to mimic the action. We want to learn how babies understand which objects can act on other objects, causing them to move- we call this causality. In previous studies we have learned that by the time infants are 24 months old they understand that animals, and not furniture, have the ability to act on other objects. We want to know what it is about the animals that causes infants to understand this ability. In this study your child will choose between animals with and without legs, and furniture with and without legs. By which toys your baby chooses we can learn whether infants think animals can make causal actions because they have legs, or because they are animals.

This study is currently being conducted with 24-month-olds

Rational Action Normal (RAN):

Do infants expect objects to be take the most rational path to a goal?

In this study your infant will see a movie in which a ball jumps over an obstacle to reach another ball. After your baby sees this event many times, we will show him or her two more movies that do not have an obstacle. In one movie, the ball still jumps even though there is no longer an obstacle for it to jump over. In the second movie, the ball moves in a straight line to get to the other ball.

We are interested in how long your baby looks at these two later movies. Do infants expect objects to move along the simplest, or most "rational" path to other objects? As adults we would not expect an entity to jump on its way to another object unless there was an obstacle in its path. The goal of this study is to see if infants have this same expectation.

This study is currently being conducted with 24-month-olds