Testing Schedule:
Participants visit the Language Lab to participate in our tasks, and also complete some at-home components, at each of the child’s following critical age points:
Three-monthly visits, at: 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 months of age, then;
Six-monthly visits, at: 30 (2.5 yoa), 36 (3 yoa), 42 (3.5 yoa), 48 (4 yoa), 54 (4.5 yoa) and 60 (5 yoa) months of age.
Our techniques and methodologies:
ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY (EEG)
EEG allows us to record the neural responses to spoken language in very young children.
Our participants complete a EEG session at their first visit at 9 months of age!
A specialised cap, containing electrodes that record brain wave activity from the scalp, is placed on the child’s head. The child then listens to a series of sentences while we record the reactions in their brain waves in response to specific target words. The procedure is very safe and non-invasive – the electrodes measure electrical activity the same way as an ECG for your heart.
As well as providing an invaluable insight into infants’ very early processing of speech, EEG makes for some very cool photos for our parents to take home!
EYE TRACKING
We employ a Tobii Pro eye-tracking system, which along with it’s accompanying software, is designed to measure the timing and duration of visual fixations. The eye-tracker cameras are integrated into the base of the monitor, which means all the child has to do is sit and watch what happens on the screen!
Our eye-tracking tasks involve specific sequences of images or pictures being shown on the screen whilst the child listens to various audio prompts, depending on the task. These tasks allow us to track which words and sentences the children are understanding at different ages and how well they identify patterns in the world. We also use the tasks to measure how quickly the children process spoken language, their memory and attention span, and, as they get older, their skills in processing more complex aspects of language like verbs and grammar.
LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis)
At each of their 3-monthly sessions, participants are given a LENA Digital Language Processor (DLP) recorder and a set of custom LENA clothing to take home. We ask that they record a typical day in their household within the week following each lab session, giving us a wonderful snapshot into the linguistic environment that surrounds the child at each of our target age points.
These recordings, when analysed by the accompanying LENA software back in the lab, provide us with invaluable information about the child’s day-to-day life, particularly the language that they hear and produce in conversation with parents and other children.
You can read more about the LENA Foundation’s work and their technology on their website.
PLAYTIME
After their lab tasks at each session, parent and child are given some time to themselves with a box of toys in our play room! They are allowed 20 minutes to play freely as they would at home, which we capture on a small video camera.
These play sessions provide us with a plethora of information about the way that parent and child naturally interact through both language and gestures, and gives a beautiful record of how the child’s own communication is developing.
It is also a fun way to end their visit as a bonus!
NARRATION
We provide a wordless picture book, from the popular Mercer Myer series of “A boy, a dog and a frog” books, for parents to narrate to their child. The lack of a script allows for a
great range of interpretations and expressions of the story to emerge.
These story-telling sessions are a wonderful way to gain insights into the type of language parents use when talking to their children, as well as the child’s interactions with their parent and the story.
STANDARDISED TESTS
These are widely-used measures of children’s development, produced by publishing companies such a Pearson Assessment. They typically involve the child completing puzzles and pointing to answers in a booklet one-on-one with the experimenter. We can begin to employ these later in the study once the children are around 3 years or older.
- Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF)-Preschool 2 Australian and New Zealand Edition: a general language measure for children aged 3 years and above. The CELF consists of tasks presented as games (e.g. pointing at pictures, labelling objects) to measure skills such as comprehension, recall and expressive vocabulary.
- Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT): a test of comprehensive vocabulary for
children aged 3 years and above.
The PPVT simply requires children to point at the correct picture on the page in response to questions such as “where is ‘running’? or “point to ‘blue’”.
- TROG-2: a test of grammar for children aged 4 years and above. Similarly to the CELF, this is presented as a series of games.
- Expression, Reception, and Recall of Narrative (ERRNI): a measure older children’s (4-years and above) ability to understand and tell stories.
QUESTIONNAIRES
We also collect information about the children’s general development, checklists of words they are saying and understanding to track the growth of their vocabularies, and information about the literacy environment at home by means of questionnaires completed by the parents at home each age point.
This information from parents is essential to capture how the children’s language abilities are growing right from their very first words, before they are old enough to show us what they can do themselves in the standardised tests!
Some questionnaires that we use include:
- MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: a checklist of common words and gestures used by children aged 8 – 30 months.
- The Ages and Stages Questionnaire: a checklist of age-related developmental milestones for physical, cognitive and social development.
ANU Language Lab 