Letting it All Hang Out at the UCLA Language Lab

I took Baby S to the UCLA Language Lab to participate in a study this week.  I'd been to the lab before with Baby M, but this was Baby S's first trip to campus.  As with my previous visits, a grad student met us at the parking garage and escorted us to the lab.  The researcher explained the study to us, I answered a short questionnaire about the languages spoken in our home and Baby S got his picture taken for a certificate of participation.  We also go to pick out a baby T-shirt as a thank you gift for our participation.

The goal of this study was to determine when babies begin to distinguish their own language from other languages.  Baby S and I sat in a small, dark room while recordings of people speaking English and Japanese played.  The researcher watched us over a video feed and recorded whether or not Baby S paid attention to the voices.  I wore head phones blasting Frank Sinatra tunes so that I wouldn't inadvertently influence Baby S as I held him in my lap.   About 2 minutes into the session Baby S let out the loudest, smelliest fart ever.  It was so loud I could hear it over Frank belting out My Way.  Then Baby S proceeded to have an explosive bowel movement. It was one of those situations where you marvel at how much noise, odor and poop one tiny baby can produce.  I held him, grimacing, and tried to decide if I should stop the study or not.  These experiments are usually pretty short so I thought we could just tough it out, but it kept going on and on and on.  The Way You Look Tonight.  Luck Be A Lady.  The Girl From Ipanema.  All punctuated by loud noises from Baby S's bottom.  Eventually the researcher came out from behind the curtain and told us we were done.  I don't know if they'll be able to use our tape or not, but at least they'll get a good laugh watching it.

UCLA Language Lab

You may recall that Baby M and I participated in several UCLA Baby Lab studies. Now that Baby M is getting older we haven't gotten many calls from the Baby Lab lately, but last week we did get a call from the UCLA Language Lab asking if Baby M would like to participate in a study about language acquisition. I said, "Sure."

So this morning we drove over to UCLA where a nice undergraduate student met us at the parking structure and escorted us to the Language Lab. It was very similar to the Baby Lab; there were some toys for Baby M to play with, friendly research assistants and the same eye tracking software. Additionally, there was the "castle", a small room with sound and video monitoring equipment decorated to look like a tower in a fairy tale. We entered the castle along with the researcher where there was a computer screen set up. Baby M was shown some cartoon images along with corresponding sound and then asked to repeat what he heard. We viewed a picture of a man swimming and heard a voice say "He swims fast." Later the picture came up again with the phrase "There he swims." Initially Baby M was too shy to say anything, but eventually the researcher did get a few words out of him. As a thank you for participating Baby M got to choose a gift out of the "treasure chest." He picked a small white ball with the Language Lab logo printed on it.

The goal of the study is to understand how young children learn and respond to grammatical sentences. The researcher said Baby M's performance was pretty typical. About 50% of the children in his age range don't say anything at all and those that do are more likely to repeat the verb if it comes at the end of the sentence as opposed to the middle. Language acquisition is such an interesting process, and one that, as the mother of a relatively late-talker, I am particularly interested in. I'd happily participate in additional Language Lab studies.