ABSTRACT
Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.
Subject(s)
Eye Movements , Eye-Tracking Technology , Humans , Child, Preschool , Infant , InternetABSTRACT
Children (N = 278, 34-71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which figurine turned on the music box, especially when the observed and testimonial evidence conflicted, children were given access to the music box during their sorting. However, children rarely explored. Indeed, they struggled to disregard the misleading testimony both when sorting the figurines and when asked about a future attempt. In contrast, children who explored the effectiveness of the figurines dismissed the misleading testimony.
Subject(s)
Child Development , Trust , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
Across two experiments, an adult informant presented 220 preschoolers (34-71 months of age) with either a correct claim or an incorrect claim about how to activate a music box by using one of two toy figures. Children were then prompted to explore the figures and to discover whether the informant's claim was correct or incorrect. Children who discovered the claim to be incorrect no longer endorsed it. Moreover, their predictions regarding a new figure's ability to activate the music box were clearly affected by the reliability of the informant's prior claim. Thus, children reassess an informant's incorrect claim about an object in light of later empirical evidence and transfer their conclusions regarding the validity of that claim to subsequent objects.
Subject(s)
Disclosure , Judgment , Knowledge , Trust , Adult , Child Development , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
Maternal depression is a risk factor for child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Aiming to investigate the moderating role of child inhibitory control on this relationship, we invited a sub-sample of dyads from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort study (MoBa) for a lab-based assessment (N = 92, M age = 68 months, Range = 59-80, 50% girls). Maternal depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), while child behaviors were measured using the Child Behavior Check List, and inhibitory control using a child friendly version of the Flanker-task. As expected, higher levels of concurrent maternal depressive symptoms predicted higher levels of child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Importantly, and in line with our predictions, child inhibitory control moderated the association. Lower levels of inhibitory control predicted a stronger association between concurrent maternal depressive symptoms and child behavioral outcomes. The results support prior research suggesting that concurrent maternal depression poses a risk for child development, and highlight that children with lower levels of inhibitory control are more vulnerable to negative environmental influences. These findings contribute to our understanding of the complexity of parental mental health issues on child development and suggest avenues for personalized treatment programs for families and children at risk.