UPCOMING CONFERENCES
Cognitive Development Society
CDS will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA in April 2022. ManyBabies will be co-hosting a CDS pre-conference, BIG TEAM SCIENCE FOR STUDYING SMALL PEOPLE. We're thrilled to be working with colleagues from Lookit, the PLAY project, Children Helping Science, and the Psychological Science Accelerator to bring you MB research updates, discussions, and workshops regarding online data collection and collaboration. Stay tuned for information regarding registration and other details.
International Congress of Infant Studies
ICIS will be held in Ottawa, Canada in July 2022. We are working with MB project leadership teams to propose a symposium with research updates and a talk about the future directions of ManyBabies. Let us know if you are interested in presenting other MB-related projects so we can track affiliated symposia and posters. The submission deadline is December 10, 2021. Hope to see you there!
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ManyBabies Discussion Groups
- Do you have ideas for ways we could improve MB?
- Would you like to help make MB a more diverse and inclusive coalition?
- Are you interested in contributing to discussions about the future directions of MB?
- Do you have expertise in an area you think would be useful across MB projects (e.g., communications, statistical modeling/data analysis, open science practices)?
If you answered "YES" to any of these questions, or you're just interested in being more involved in the planning and decision-making that goes into making MB run, please join Heidi (MB’s Executive Director) for an open group discussion. We are interested in involving members of the MB community (ESPECIALLY STUDENTS AND EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS) in shaping the future of MB.
We will meet on Dec. 14 and Dec. 15/16 (depending on where you are in the world). Please click on the RSVP button(s) below to receive an invite with Zoom link. If neither of these times work for you but you are interested in participating, please contact Heidi Baumgartner. |
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
ManyBabies has a calendar!
Keep up to date with MB projects and events. You can view our public calendar here or subscribe using this url. To add events to the calendar or for help scheduling a MB-related event, email manybabiesconsortium@gmail.com.
ManyBabies has a Twitter account!
Follow us and join the discussion about all things ManyBabies, developmental psychology, and Big Team Science.
Fill out our feedback survey!
If you haven't already, there's still time to let us know how things are going.
Update your MB activities and initiatives!
Don’t forget to keep an updated record of your ManyBabies-related activities and initiatives (e.g., workshops, talks, etc.), which are tracked in this spreadsheet. To add an entry, please complete this form.
Lookit is hiring a software engineer!
Learn more about Lookit and read about the position here.
CoCoDev call for new members!
CoCoDev is looking for researchers interested in joining their new community on the cross-cultural study of children’s multimodal communication and its cognitive infrastructure, focusing on cost-effective research methods that allow large-scale, diverse data collection and annotation (e.g., Zoom conversations, unmoderated online cognitive experiments, and automatic annotation tools). More info here.
Meet the ManyBabies Support Team!
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Heidi Baumgartner is the new MB Executive Director. She got started in developmental psychology as an undergraduate in Anne Fernald’s lab at Stanford, did graduate work at the University of California, Davis with Lisa Oakes, and worked as a postdoc with Dima Amso at Brown. You can contact Heidi at heidib@stanford.edu.
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Grace Zhou is the new MB Office Assistant. She was introduced to the field of infant developmental psychology during her undergraduate program at McGill University in Montreal, where she worked with Linda Polka. Please feel free to contact her at grace.zhou@umanitoba.ca.
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MB1: Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) Preference Spin-off Projects:
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MB1: IDS in African infants
The ManyBabies1—Africa project has the goal of extending the original MB1 design to labs in Africa. We have a group of more than 10 sites committed to this project, following a successful conference in Kenya in January 2020. Our registered report was just recently accepted at Developmental Science, and – despite pandemic-related delays – our first infants were just tested in Ghana (congrats to Paul Oburu for leading this effort!). Stay tuned for more updates as data collection continues.
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MB1L: Longitudinal CDI follow-up
The ManyBabies1—Longitudinal CDI follow-up has completed data collection and is working on finalizing the pre-registered and exploratory analyses for the Registered Report Stage 2 submission at Journal of Child Language. We collected CDI data from 9 North American English, 4 British English, and 8 additional laboratories who had participated in the original MB1 study, to examine the relationship between IDS preference and later language outcomes. Additional contributors for data analysis (especially those with strong R skills) and writing are still welcome. Please contact Melanie Soderstrom if interested.
MB1T: Test-Retest follow-up
The ManyBabies1—Test-Retest follow-up investigates the test-retest reliability of infant-directed speech preference measures. Participating labs of the original MB1 study were asked to have their tested infants return for a retest appointment assessing their IDS preference. We are currently finalizing the code to generate the main dataset and to reproduce the analyses of MB1, and are preparing the manuscript for submission. Stay tuned for the preprint, or contact Melanie Schreiner for more info.
MB1N: Native languages follow-up
The ManyBabies1—Native languages follow-up investigates infants' preference for IDS over ADS in their native language (instead of North-American English [NAE]). The languages that we are testing are Norwegian, Turkish, Czech, French, and Dutch. We will compare these infants’ preference for IDS in their native language with infants from these same countries’ IDS preference in NAE. All stimuli have already been recorded for each native language. Some labs managed to complete data collection before the pandemic hit, while others were/are still struggling to resume or even to start. We are reaching out to the participating labs to confirm their participation and the status of the data. If you are interested in collecting data in one of the languages mentioned above or contributing in another way, contact Virginie Durier.
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MB2: Theory of Mind
ManyBabies2, our project to study Theory of Mind in early childhood, is making good progress on our first set of studies addressing the reliability of anticipatory looking measures. Before we address false vs. true belief sensitivity in anticipatory looking, the first study constitutes a conceptual check with the same paradigm to establish whether toddlers are sensitive to the more basic difference between knowledge and ignorance of an agent. We are currently revising the corresponding registered report, which received overall positive responses from reviewers in two rounds. We look forward to beginning data collection as soon as possible after the RR is approved, hopefully in the spring of 2022. We are still looking for labs who are interested in collecting data, and we also need some data-savvy folks (especially with eye-tracking expertise) to join our analysis team. Please email Tobias Schuwerk if you are interested.
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MB3: Rule learning
ManyBabies3 is testing whether infants can form abstract rules from patterned (ABA vs ABB) syllable sequences and apply those rules to the same patterns consisting of new syllables. We are seeking to test the phenomenon reported in Marcus et al. (1999) across a wide age-range (5-12 mo) and different experimental paradigms. The Stage 1 Registered Report manuscript was submitted to Developmental Science in Summer 2021 and we are currently finalizing the revisions to resubmit at the end of the year. We anticipate being able to begin data collection by spring or summer 2022, pandemic permitting. Currently 25 labs have signed up for 500+ expected participants. MB3 welcomes new contributors in all aspects of the project, including data management/processing, data analysis, writing, and data collection. Please email Ingmar Visser if you are interested.
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MB3N: Rule learning NIRS
ManyBabies3—NIRS, a project investigating the neural correlates of repetition-based rule learning using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), is in the process of preparing the study, the Registered Report, and data collection. Stimuli have been defined and created, the paradigm has been discussed, and data analysis pipelines are currently being worked out. In parallel, the Registered Report is being written up as we go along. Since this is a brain imaging study generating high-dimensional data, data processing and analysis is particularly heavy, so we anticipate several months of work before the RR Stage 1 manuscript can be completed and submitted. Data acquisition will likely start in 2023. If you are interested in joining, please email Judit Gervain.
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MB4: Social evaluation
In ManyBabies4 we are investigating a fundamental aspect of human nature: evaluating others’ actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy. We do so in a closely coordinated, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating the helping/hindering finding reported by Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom (2007). Using videos of the "hill" helper/hinderer puppet show, labs from around the world will collect data from infants between the ages of 5.5 and 10.5 months. In April 2021 our Registered Report received an “in-principle” acceptance from Developmental Science. To date, 63 laboratories from 17 countries have expressed interest in joining the project, pledging to test 1,462 infants. We are ready to begin data collection and plan to do so as soon as the majority of our participating laboratories are ready to collect data. We hope to begin data collection as early as Spring 2022. We are actively recruiting new labs to join MB4! If you are interested in signing up to collect data for MB4, please fill out our interest form here and sign up for the MB4 mailing list. If you have any questions about the MB4 project, please contact Kelsey Lucca.
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MB5: Hunter & Ames model
ManyBabies5 is a large-scale, cross-cultural investigation of the Hunter and Ames (1988) model of infant looking preferences. The goal is to form a consensus-based experimental design that tests H&A’s prediction that infant age, familiarization time, and stimulus complexity interact to predict the trajectory of infants’ looking to novel vs. familiar stimuli. We have received enthusiastic approval from Nature Human Behaviour to submit our Stage 1 Registered Report. The project leads, the stimulus/design team, and the writing team have been actively shaping many aspects of this project, alongside open communication and occasional check-ins with individuals on the MB5 listserv. Based on community input, we have finalized most decisions about design, and we will soon be calling for anybody’s input in the remaining minor design decisions. We have drafted the Introduction of the RR, and we are nearing completion of the Method section. We welcome contributions in any way at any level, and we truly hope the initial swell of enthusiasm for this project (118 labs!) continues in the months ahead. Stay tuned for our next MB5 meeting. If you have a question or would like to join the project, please email Jessica Kosie and Martin Zettersten and/or join our Slack and listserv.
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ManyBabies—Demographics
The goal of ManyBabies—Demographics is to develop a standardized tool to document sociodemographic information about participants. The project consists of developing questions to ask about an individual's personal history (place of birth; migration history), age and length of gestation, gender, language exposure, caregiver experiences, developmental disabilities, and socio-economic status. Questions for each section of the survey were co-developed by working groups. Each set of questions has been discussed within the larger group and questions are being finalized and a manuscript is currently being prepared. If you have questions about this project, please contact Leher Singh.
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ManyBabies—AtHome
ManyBabies—AtHome aims to make remote data collection via webcam feasible for infant research (see our paper on the rationale behind MBAH). To this end, we brought together a large community of infant researchers already using or interested in using different tools for remote data collection. Our initial focus is on measuring looks (for instance, in a visual preference paradigm), the main dependent variable of many infant studies. Current efforts focus on translating the Lookit platform (contact: Sho Tsuji), ethical considerations (contact: Helen Buckler), an initial visual preference study (contact: Sho Tsuji), and a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural looking-while-listening study (contact: Katie Von Holzen). We send regular updates on these projects out via our mailing list and Slack. In addition to the ongoing projects, you can find calls for student projects in Slack. We also welcome your ideas for projects that support our overarching goals.
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