Dear Parents,
Over the next few years you will witness amazing changes as your child learns to navigate the world, interact with others, and use language!At the Child Language and Cognition Project, we are interested in understanding these changes. We hope that you and your child will visit us and participate in our research one day. Our studies are fun for the children and provide an opportunity for you to learn more about your child’s development.
Please find out more here on our website!
Why we study children
We seek to find out how infants and children understand the world and how this understanding changes as they develop.
We are particularly interested in how children perceive the behaviors of people around them and how they learn to communicate with others.
Our studies ask questions such as:
- How do children learn to use words?
- What do children know about the desires, feelings and ideas of others?
- How do children learn to cooperate and be fair?
How your child can participate
We hope you and your child will participate in our child studies, which are made to be fun and are tailored exactly to what children of different ages find engaging. Some examples include:
- Babies might watch cartoon-like scenes on a screen and where they are looking tells us what catches their interest.
- Infants and children might listen to different people talking and we study which brain areas process language.
- Children might listen to stories or take part in short plays with puppets and we ask them what they think about their interactions with the puppets.
We encourage all family members to join us. Brothers and sisters can come along as well. We have a play space for them and will provide babysitting.
We are located on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We can provide parking on campus and will reimburse you for your travel expenses.
Participation in our research is completely voluntary and you or your child can stop participation at any moment during the study.
Before you visit us for a study, we will give you a call to explain our study and answer your questions. After our studies are complete, we will send you a summary of our findings.
If you and your children are interested in participating in our research, please fill out this form so we can contact you.
You can also email us at child-lab@umich.edu or call us at 734-615-6413.
