Some things you might want to know about language research in our lab...

What sort of activities will I take part in?
Eye-tracking measures


​Eye-tracking allows us to look at what words and sentences your child understands at

different ages. This technique exploits the fact that children tend to look at pictures

that match the words and sentences they hear. 


Typically, your child will sit in a car seat in front of a special screen and will listen to

sentences (e.g. look at the doggie!) while looking at pictures or short images or

video clips). Our eye-tracker allows us to monitor where your child looks as the

sentence unfolds; it's a great way of telling us whether your child

understands the words and sentences they are hearing, as well as how quickly

they process these words. 
​Not only this, but eye-tracking can be used to assess young children, which means that we can find out about the very earliest stages of the

language learning process. 
        So, this means that we can test very young children...
                                        ...and children who are a older!

​As you can see, children do not need ​to wear anything obtrusive for us to track their ​eye movements; we simply pop a small target sticker on

their forehead - which most children are completely unaware ​of!

​
Standardised measures


These are widely-used measures of children’s development produced

by publishing companies such as Pearson Assessment. These

measures typically take between 20 and 45 minutes to complete and

tend to be suitable for older children. The ones you might see us use

are:


BPVS: This is a test of receptive vocabulary that can be used for

children from the age of 2 years old. In this assessment, children are

simply required to point to one of four pictures in response to a

verbal prompt such as, "Can you put your finger on cup?" (see picture

on right).
          
          

CELF-Preschool 2 UK: This is a general language measure for children

aged 3 years old and above. The CELF consists of some games 

(e.g., pointing at pictures, labelling objects) that your child will take

part in with one of our researchers.

      

TROG-2: This a test of grammar for children aged 4 years old and 

above. Just like the CELF, the TROG-2 requires your child to take part

in some pointing games with one of our researchers.
Behavioural measures
Our research isn't limited just to using specialist equipment like eye-trackers; we also use a number of other methods to investigate children's

​language development.

​ 
Sometimes, we might ask you to come in to take part in a session 

​where you and child will read stories together
Other times, we might be interested in filming you and child in a free-

​play session with different toys
In some of our tasks, your child will play a fun game with one of

​our researchers
Sometimes, we ask children to point to one of a pair of images to

learn ​more about the types of sentence structures that they

​understand
​Questionnaires

Often, we will ask you to fill in questionnaires about your child's language development. These questionnaires take between 5 and

20 minutes to complete. The questionnaires we use are:

·         The UK-CDI: a checklist of common words and gestures used by children aged 8-18 months

·         The Lincoln-CDI: a checklist of common words and gestures used by children 16-30 months.

·         The Family Questionnaire: questionnaire about your child’s health and family background.