Methods & Documentation

We use eye-tracking, audio discrimination, EEG, and corpus analysis to examine word learning in infants.


Potential Eligibility

Infant Eye-Tracking Discrimination EEG Corpus Contribution
Typically Developing
Profound Hearing Impairment
Profound Vision Impairment

Eye-Tracking

    For typically-developing infants or infants with hearing impairments, we use eye-tracking to gain insight into infant word learning and word differention.



EEG (electroencephalogram)

    For typically-developing children and those with profound hearing or visual impairments, we also use EEG. Using this non-invasive method, we look for certain patterns of brain activity after hearing different types of words. (For the curious: We look for a p100 or N400 .)



Corpus building and analysis

    We are in the process of collecting day-long recordings of infants with profound visual impairments. The infants simply wear a vest all day with an audio recording device (LENA) nestled inside. We also invite families to optionally complete a video-recorded play session in the lab.

    The Bergelson Lab already has a corpus of audio- and video-recordings from typically-developing infants, part of a project called SEEDLingS .





Audio discrimination tasks

    The Bergelson Lab also uses experimental paradigms such as habituation and Headturn Preference Procedure. Using these methods, we measure infants' looking and listening times to different stimuli in order to learn about aspects of early language development.



Lab Documentation



The BLAB is part of Harvard's Laboratory for Developmental Studies (LDS).

This research group has looked at infant and child development for many years with the help of parents and children in the greater Boston area. Our projects have revealed complex cognitive, social, emotional, and language abilities in babies and children.

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