Current studies
We always have several ongoing studies running in our labs. Below you can find information about each one.
Many Babies 2: “Theory of mind”
This is a collaborative study involving many babylabs around the word. In this study we investigate whether 2-3-year-olds are able to anticipate the behavior of a character by taking into account what this character knows or does not know about the situation. Your child sits in your lap and is shown cartoon animations in which one of the characters hides and the other tries to find him. The one who searches sometimes does know that the other changed his location. By using an eye-tracker we will be able to see whether your child would look at the location where s/he expects the character should search.
How babies learn to understand different sounds/tones in the language
In this study, we want to understand how babies learn to understand the different sounds that make up words in other languages. We will be studying babies who are 4.5 and 10 months old. During the study, your baby will sit on your lap and listen to a series of sounds that change in tone.
We will use a NIRS headgear that shines light onto your baby's head and measures brain activity. This is a safe and non-invasive way to study brain development in babies. By learning more about how babies process these sounds, we can better understand how their brains develop and how they learn a language.
PerPLex: Perception and Production of Lexical items
You may have noticed that sometimes your toddler says words differently than you would do. For example: ‘tuck’ instead of ‘truck’. But why do toddlers do this? Is it a mispronunciation, as would be the case with adults? Or have they not yet completely perceived and thus incorrectly memorized that word (in the mental dictionary)? Or are they not capable yet of properly pronouncing all the sounds involved due to incomplete production?
To recognize a mispronunciation, a word must already be learned correctly through the speech perception system. To correct it, the speech production system must be able to properly pronounce a word. Both systems consist of multiple steps, so knowledge must be acquired and applied on several levels simultaneously. Sometimes toddlers may have a hard time dealing with this.
By observing if and how they handle mispronunciations we can learn a lot about whether we deal with either actual mispronunciations or the result of incomplete perception or incomplete production. The PerPLex project, a collaboration with the Radboud University Nijmegen, investigates why children between 2 and 3 years old make such types of mistakes. Specifically, we are curious about self-monitoring in these children, i.e., the extent to which they themselves (can) adjust their speech when they "mispronounce" something.
The study consists of multiple parts. First, a few standardized tests determine which words your toddler can recognize and speak. Then, a series of tasks are presented in the lab spread over two visits. From language games with your toddler where mispronunciations are provoked, we can analyze (the degree of) self-correction. In addition, your toddler will watch some videos while an eye tracker measures what your child looks at when pictures are named. In this way, the extent to which toddlers recognize the different words using their perception system can be analyzed.