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Current Studies
We are currently running studies with children who are
3, 5, 6-7, 9, 11-14, 16, 18,
20, 22, 24, and 26 months old.
Sticky Arm Mittens:
Can infants who pick up balls with Velcro mittens perceive
causality earlier?
In this study your baby will be wearing mittens while interacting
with some balls and then be shown a video. Your infant may wear mittens
with or without Velcro. If the mittens have Velcro on them this will make
it easier for your infant to pick up the balls and interact with them. We
want to see if the experience of being able to pick up the balls, or being
a causal agent, helps infants to form an understanding of causality more
generally. To test this, we first will show your infant an animation of an
arm hitting a ball, causing it to move. This animation will be shown
repeatedly, until your infant is no longer interested in looking at it. We
will then show your infant different interactions, some of which violated
the previously presented causal relationship. If infants have formed a
representation of causality, they should look longer at these novel events
that violate the previously presented causal relationship.
This study is currently being conducted with
3- and 5- month-olds.
Tracking Rat:
Do infants have a detection mechanism, or perceptual template for
rats?
In a previous
study done by our lab, it was found that young infants have a detection
mechanism, or perceptual template, for spiders; that is, 5-month-olds track
a schematic spider longer than scrambled versions of a spider. In this
experiment we are interested in whether or not young infants have a
detection mechanism for rats. We chose rats because they (along with
spiders) are a top phobia among adults, and they have been present
throughout the evolution of humans. From an evolutionary perspective,
children should be interested in something that could be potentially
dangerous. This interest in potential threats would allow them to make a
connection between that threat and the emotional response of an adult. This
connection could potentially lead to the child fearing that threat, and
therefore help them to be safe in a future encounter.
This study is currently being conducted with
5- month-olds.
Perceiving
Ambiguous Motion:
When
kids see a moving object come from off screen, do they expect that it moved
on its own or was it caused to move by another ball?
Research
in our lab has explored the relationship between infants’ perception of how
objects move, self-propulsion, and roles in causal events. In this study we
are examining how infants perceive the motion of an ambiguous object.
Specifically, we are interested in seeing if infants perceive an object
that they only see in motion as having started moving on its own, or being caused to move by another object. To test
this, we will first show your infant a ball emerging from behind a screen.
Next, we will lower the screen and show your child two possible disambiguations of the event: either the ball will be
bumped by another ball, or it will start moving on its own. We are
interested in seeing which of these two events infants find more
surprising.
This study is currently being conducted with 6-, 7-,
and 9- month-olds.
Probabilistic
Evidence and Real Life:
Will
infants’ choices in a probabilistic real life setting correspond with their
look times of a base rate stimuli video?
In this study we are interested in infants’
understanding of base rates. Your infant will be presented with an animal
cracker and a Lego block, they were then presented
with two new containers one with 4 animal crackers and one with 4 Lego
blocks. We are looking to see if your infant chooses consistently with the
best probabilistic outcome (if they chose an animal cracker, they should
choose the container with 4 animal crackers). They will then be shown
images of red and blue balls falling into a container and one ball coming
out. We are looking to see if infants would look longer at the inconsistent
base rates (a blue ball coming out of a mostly red sample) than at the
consistent base rates. We are interested in if their real life choices
match up with their looking times in the video.
This study is currently being conducted with 9- and 13-
month-olds.
Deduction Object
Examining:
Can
infants learn an association between two parts without seeing them
together?
In
this experiment we are interested in whether children can learn to
associate two features that they have never seen together. For example,
your child may see a green box with a cross attached to it on one trial and
a handle attached to it on another trial. To test this, we present children
with consistent shapes which have both a cross and a handle, and
inconsistent shapes which have just one of those parts paired with a
different type of part. If children have learned the association, they
should examine the inconsistent shapes longer than the consistent shapes.
Being able to pick up on these types of associations can allow children to
learn about object features in the real world.
This study is currently being conducted with 9-, 11-,
and 13- month olds.
Paired Associations
with Predators and Faces:
Will
infants learn emotions associated with predators more quickly than with
non-predators?
In
this study your infant will be shown either a potentially harmful animal (a
snake or spider) or a non-harmful object (a flower or mushroom) paired with
either a happy or sad face. We will then show your infant a pairing they
had not seen before. We are examining whether infants learn more quickly to
associate an emotion with harmful animals than with non-harmful objects.
This could provide evidence that humans are “prepared” by evolution to
learn the appropriate emotional response for some things but not others.
This
study is currently being conducted with 11- month-olds.
Inanimate &
Animate Causal Energy State:
Do children expect that agents in causal events should be able to
maintain their energy and recipients should not?
In this study we are exploring infants’ expectations about internal
sources of energy. In causal events, typically things that are agents and
cause other things to move are animate beings like people or animals. These
things can maintain their energy when they are in motion. In contrast,
things that are recipients and are caused to move are typically inanimate
things like balls, boxes, or cups, which cannot maintain their energy after
being set n motion. We are interested in seeing
the age at which these expectations may emerge.
This study is currently being conducted with
14- and 16- month-olds.
Discrimination of
CRABB stimuli:
Can
kids tell apart different types of moving objects?
This
study is an accompaniment to another study we are running that tests
children’s understanding of relationships between part motion and object
motion. In this study we are simply testing whether or not children can
discriminate between different types of movement. For example, when
children are shown an object with two parts, can they tell apart an event
in which this object is moving with one of its parts moving from an event
where this object is moving with no parts moving? Can they tell both of
those events apart from a stationary object with one moving part?
Determining if infants can tell apart different kinds of motion will allow
us to make more informed conclusions in the study we are running about
causal relationships in motion events.
This experiment is currently being conducted with 16-
month-olds.
Causality
Recognition and Backward Blocking:
Can kids learn that moving parts of an object cause it to move?
In this experiment we are interested in whether or not children can
learn the causal relationship between part motion and object motion. In the
world, children see many examples of parts causing objects to move, such as
leg or wheel motion. When do children learn the causal relationship between
things like leg movement and walking? To examine this question we first
show infants an object that moves when both parts of the object move. Then
they are shown that the object can move with just a single part moving.
From these displays, it should be inferred that the second part that is
never seen moving on its own does not cause the object to move. If infants
learn this causal relationship, then they should look longer at an event
that violates it in which the object moves when this second part
moves.
This study is currently being conducted with
20- month-olds.
Parts, Object
Names, and Deduction:
Can infants learn an association between a part and an object name
without experiencing the two together?
In this experiment, we are interested in examining how children
integrate different pieces of information together, which they acquired at
different points in time. This is a common challenge that children must
face. On some trials your child will see an object that has a particular
part attached to it, and then on other trials your child will see the same
object without the part, but the object is given a name. We are interested
in seeing if children can learn that things that have the particular part
should have the label they were exposed to during training.
This study is currently being conducted with
16-, 20-, and 24- month-olds.
Deduction with
External Parts:
Can infants detect connections between external parts of certain
objects and the way the object moves?
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
kind of reasoning is what this study aims to pinpoint. Once infants learn
the kind of motion that goes with a shape, and the kind of external part
that goes with a shape, we want to know at what age infants should make the
connection between the external part and the motion of the shape.
This study is currently being conducted with
18- and 22- month-olds.
Generalization of
Negative and Positive Evidence:
Do infants associate novel behaviors with novel objects?
In this study we are interested in infants’ expectations about
novel objects. Your infant will be shown a particular goal-directed action
with an object and then asked to imitate that action with that object and a
novel object. We are primarily interested in responses to the novel object-
do infants generalize what they have learned about one object to a new
object, or do they expect a novel object will exhibit a novel property? We
hope these studies will tell us more about how infants develop knowledge an
expectations about new objects they encounter.
This study is currently being conducted with
18-, 22-, and 26- month-olds.
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