What do we do in the toddler studies?

Language study

We are interested in when do young children become capable of interpreting spoken sentences. This study is a part of collaborative project with Dr. Patricia Ganea at Boston University.

ASD study

We study how toddlers can find objects in a cluttered scene. In our tests, we show them a series of images and we would like to know which ones will toddlers find interesting. We measure how fast they can find an interesting object and how do they search for it. We are comparing typical children to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Adults with ASD are faster in these types of tasks than typical adults, and we would like to see if this difference is already present in young kids.

Our studies are approved by the Institutional Review Board of UMass Boston.