Once you've scheduled your appointment with the lab, a lab
member will send you an email or letter confirming the
details of your appointment. Your letter or email will also
include a map.
Please take a look at this map prior to your visit, so that
you know how to find us. Of course, if any details look
confusing, contact us and we'll be happy to assist you in
locating our lab.
On the day of your appointment, head to the University of
Arizona campus and park in our parking space located just
East of the Psychology building. The best way to find us is
to go East on 3rd/University from Campbell Avenue. When you
arrive at a stop sign, continue going straight (it will look
like you aren't supposed to, but you are!).
After you've continued straight for about 100 feet, you'll
be forced to turn right into a parking lot. Look at the
signs mounted on the wall ABOVE the parking spaces that are
on your left. Once you see the sign that says Tweety
Language Development Lab, park directly under that
sign in our parking space.
You'll notice that a phone is mounted on the wall just in
front of your car. Pick up the receiver, and the phone will
automatically call our lab. A lab member will answer the
phone and then head to the parking lot to greet you and
bring you our parking pass. We ask that you remain with your
vehicle at this time, otherwise we might have difficulty
finding you! Unfortunately, we only have access to allow
parking in the Tweety Language Lab parking space, so please
double-check to make sure you've parked in the correct spot.
Once you and your child have been greeted and brought up to
our lab on the fourth floor, you'll be seated in our
comfortable reception area. Here, we'll spend a few minutes
reminding you of what the study you and your child are
participating in entails and what you can expect during the
study. We will remind you how long the study will take, what
sorts of sounds of images your child will be exposed to, the
nature of the task your child will be involved in, and what
your role in all of this is.
This is a fabulous time for you to ask questions and get
clarification on anything that you might be curious about.
All of our lab members are knowledgeable about their
specific studies and enjoy discussing details with new and
interested parents!
After we've answered all of your questions and you have a
good understanding of what the study will be like, you'll be
asked to fill-out some light paperwork. This will involve
having you sign a parent permission form. You might also be
asked to fill out a short questionnaire or a vocabulary
inventory checksheet, depending upon the age of your child
and the nature of the study he or she is participating in.
If you'd like to take a look at the paperwork before-hand,
please select the appropriate link below next to the age of
the study that your child is participating in. Note that one
parent permission form is often used for more than one
study. The studies that share a permission form are similar
in their design and are often looking to answer similar
research questions with infants and toddlers of different
ages.
All studies: Questionnaire
9, 11, 16, & 20 month studies: Parent Permission FormAll of our infant studies conducted from the age of 4 to 20
months utilize one of two noninvasive study designs to help
us understand how babies learn language:
Head-turn Preference Procedure
The first of these designs is called the Head-turn
Preference Procedure. As the name suggests, we use your
child's head turns to allow him or her to control when and
how long he or she is exposed to a language pattern. In
these studies, your child will sit on your lap in a
sound-proof booth with two speakers-- one mounted on the
wall to your left, and one mounted on the wall to your
right. Underneath each speaker is a light. There is also a
light on the wall directly in front of you and your baby.
The primary purpose of these lights is to grab your baby's
attention. Infants participate in a short training phase
followed by a testing phase. During the training phase, we
expose your baby to an artificial language for approximately
two to three minutes. After this, the test phase begins. A
trial begins with the light flashing directly in front of
your child. As soon as your baby looks toward the center
light, one of the side lights begins to flash. When your
baby looks at the side light that has begun to flash, a
string of words is played. The strings
either conform to the artificial language which your baby
was initially exposed to during the training phase, or they
are ungrammatical and do not follow the same rules as the
training language. We measure how long your baby chooses to
listen to each of the two types of language samples that he
or she is presented with. Most often, infants will show that
they have learned the new pattern by listening longer to the
ungrammatical strings. On average, the entire procedure,
including both training and testing, takes five minutes.
Habituation Procedure
The idea behind habituation studies is that, once your child
becomes familiar with a sound, an image, or a combination of
both, he or she will show a reduction in the amount of
attention that they pay to the given stimulus. In short, we
expect that babies will become bored and uninterested once
they've learned something that they've been presented with
repeatedly. Once a child shows a significant decrease in the
amount of attention they are paying, we will then switch
some aspect of the stimulus that he or she is being exposed
to, to see if their initial level of attention
recovers. In these studies, your child will sit on
your lab in a sound-proof booth with a projector screen on
the wall in front of you. We will then display an image or
images on the screen. Usually, the images are objects which
are presently concurrently with a name, repetitive images
(like a bullseye or checkerboard) meant to keep your child
visually entertained while they hear a string of words, or a
cartoon image of a baby sucking on a pacifier to keep their
attention intermittently throughout the study. We present
different trials repeatedly, until your baby meets what is
called a "habituation criterion" (in simpler terms, until
your baby gets bored!). At this juncture, we switch the
stimuli that we are presenting to see if your child regains
interest in the study. For instance, if we present an object
to your child over and over again with the same name each
time, will they "perk up" or notice the difference when we
change the initial-consonant sound in the name of the
object, or if we assign a totally different name to the
object? On average, these studies take about six to eight
minutes.
Our current toddler and child study (30-72 months) doesn't
utilize either of the aforementioned designs but, rather,
employs use of a computer game that your child plays along
with the help of a friendly puppet named Sheepy!
Toddler and Child Study
This study involves playing a computer game wherein your
child sits down and is presented with artificial names of
made-up animals. After learning the animal names, your child
takes a short break before returning to the computer game
and seeing if he or she can recall the names of the animals
that he or she learned in the first part of the experiment.
This study takes approximately 45 minutes.
Once the study is complete, you will be brought back into
our reception area, where your child will choose a book or
toy for participating. If you have any further questions at
this point, we're happy to answer them. Also, if you're
ready to schedule for the next study, we can often do that
at the close of your appointment. After we've wrapped up, we
will walk you and your baby downstairs to your car.
If you've read the information above and think you and your
child(ren) might be interested in participating in our
studies, we'd love to have you!
Please send us an email at tweety@email.arizona.edu
or call us at (520) 626-5720 to get signed up! When
you sign up, we'll ask you for some basic contact
information as well as information regarding your child's
birth date, birth term (weeks gestation at time of birth),
and birth weight. We will then work out a time that is
convenient for you to come to our lab. Once we've finalized
your appointment date and time, we'll send an email or
letter confirming your appointment details and providing
instructions for getting to our lab.
Even if you choose not to sign up, we thank you very
much for your interest in our lab and our research. The
kindness of the members of the Tucson and surrounding
communities is what has allowed our lab to contribute to
the knowledge base concerning language development and
make strides in our understanding of how infants learn
language for over 15 years!
Website maintenance by Sara Knight | Last updated May 16, 2013
Original website design by Juliet Minton