Research

At Baby Talk Lab, we always take an evidence-based approach in our services. Therefore, we are committed to continuously learning more about cognition during the first years of life. In collaboration with academic researchers worldwide, we conduct studies that are fun for kids and also add to our understanding of early cognition. In all our research, we adhere to a strict code of ethics in order to ensure that no risk is posed to parent or child at any time. If you and your little scientist are interested in participating in a study, please fill out the form below!

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Current & Upcoming Projects

Mother-Child Reading Interaction

The Mother-Child Reading Interaction study is an ongoing research study that investigates how young children and their mothers read together, what kinds of strategies and language they use, and how these factors relate to early language development.

In this study, a mother and child pair are video- or audio-recorded for approximately 20 minutes as they read an age-appropriate children’s book together.

In some cases, a trained researcher may also conduct a vocabulary assessment with the child using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (5th Ed.). The results of this assessment are not used for any diagnostic purposes, but can be shared with parents upon request.

Some of this research has been conducted in collaboration with Beaconhouse School, E11 Early Years Campus.

Future work in this domain will also be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Yayun Zhang and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

MB5

MB5 is the fifth major project of ManyBabies, a global research consortium dedicated to studying infant cognition. In this project, the Hunter & Ames (1988) model of infant attention is tested in labs around the world in order to understand infant curiosity and provide the most comprehensive, global picture of the early foundations of infant cognition to date.

As part of this project, Baby Talk Lab will be conducting a study in which babies 18 months and younger view images of unfamiliar objects on a screen, and their eye movements will be tracked using a video camera as they look at the images.

Cross-Linguistic Plurals

The Cross-Linguistic Plurals study is an international study that explores how children learning Estonian, Maltese, Eegimaa, and Pashto acquire plurals in their native language. Because these languages each have different systems of pluralization, comparison across these will provide insight into the way that language develops in early life, which aspects are driven by the language being learned, and which aspects are universal to human children everywhere.

This work is in collaboration with Dr. Virve Vihman (University of Tartu), Michela Vella (University of Malta), and Dr. Serge Sagna (University of Manchester).