Welcome, and thanks for your interest in our work.


You can get the poster handout presented at SRCD 2007 Here

You can get the poster handout presented at BUCLD 2007 Here

For more information or questions please contact Shakila Shayan

Sample recorded sessions of children performing the task in the first study:

Here is an example of a 4 yrs old child during the No-language condition of a familair scene

Here is an example of a 4 yrs old child during the No-language condition of a novel scene

Sample recorded sessions of children performing the task in the second study with the star component being introduced:

Here is an example of a 2.5 yrs old child during the language condition of a Familair scene

Here is an example of a 2.5 yrs old child during the language condition of a Novel scene


Below you can find the link to the animations used for our experiments with a brief description.

Familiarization trials

Children were familiarized to these everyday actions in an analogy task, before being introduced to the novel test trials.

Chase

Kick

Push

Drop

Novel test trials

In study 1 : During the test trials children would see these paired events side-by-side, twice; (one at a time first and then simultaneously) ,before they were asked to find the match to a selected role, which was always one of the participants of the left scene.
If it was a language condition the child would hear " this [Verbed] this ,which one is like it on your side?".
If it was a no language condition the child would hear "the hand points to this one on my side which one is like it on your side?" Here is a full list of all trials

Pair 1

Pair 2

Pair 3

Pair 4

Pair 5

Pair 6

Pair 7

Pair 8

Pair 9

Pair 10

Pair 11

Pair 12

For the final study which is testing the role of components of an action sequence in identifying the agent and patient role we took six of these 12 trials and used them as control and created 2 more conditions based on them.

In No-state-change, state of the patient doesn't change in reaction to the action. Example can be found here for Pair 8 No-State-Change

In No-contact, Agent acts on the patient from the distance without coming into contact with it. Example can be found here for Pair 8 No-Contact

This time during each trial children would see these paired events one at a time. Study was done in language condition , a star component was introduced to the child while familiarization. during test trials the child would see one of the side by side scenes ,at the end of the action experimenter would put a star on the selected role and say This "verbed this so this gets the star (or this was verbed by this if the patient role was selected) . and the child puts her own star on the selected object. after doing this twice with one of the scenes the child would watch the matching scene which was the same action between different participants and at the end experimenter would elicit an answer by asking the child "where does the star go".