Towards more international multi-lab collaborations: Investigating the effects of bilingualism on infant gaze following

• In Event: 1-041 - Big Ideas to Tackle Small Samples

Integrative Statement

In psychology, large multi-lab collaborations are gaining increasing momentum. Recent efforts both in adult work (ManyLabs: Klein et al., 2014) and infant research (ManyBabies: Frank et al., 2017) have combined the forces across labs to collect a large body of experimental data to answer a set of high impact research questions. In this presentation, we discuss one such effort as an example of the significant scientific promise of multi-lab collaboration in developmental research. As an offshoot of the ManyBabies1 project (a multi-lab project investigating the preference for infant-directed speech) a group of labs testing bilingual infants conducted a study on infant gaze-following, that infants completed in the same session after ManyBabies 1.
Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously attend to what other people do, for example, following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolinguals, do not always have access to the same word learning heuristics (e.g. mutual exclusivity) and face greater ambiguity in language learning. We tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze towards an object using the gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (2008).
To date, 18 labs from 9 countries have indicated their intention to contribute data. We project a total sample of 304 6-9 and 336 12-15 monolingual and bilingual infants. Data collection is still ongoing and is expected to be completed by the end of August, 2018. In keeping with our pre-registered data analysis plan, we cannot analyze our data until the full data set has been collected. However, we plan to have a full data set and analyses to present at SRCD.
This project illustrates how bringing together researchers in one collaboration can inspire additional collaborative efforts. Multi-lab collaborative studies can generate much greater sample sizes and greater cross-sample variability than labs working alone, which is particularly important for difficult-to-recruit participants, such as bilingual infants. In addition, by standardizing protocols across labs, multi-lab studies are well positioned to explore the size, moderators, and generalizability of effects obtained.

References:
Frank, M. C., Bergelson, E., Bergmann, C., Cristia, A., Floccia, C., Gervain, J., Hamlin, J. K., Hannon, E. E., Kline, M., Levelt, C., Lew-Williams, C., Nazzi, T., Panneton, R., Rabagliati, H., Soderstrom, M., Sullivan, J., Waxman, S., & Yurovsky, D. (2017). A collaborative approach to infant research: Promoting reproducibility, best practices, and theory-building. Infancy, 22(4), 421-435.

Klein, R. A., Ratliff, K. A., Vianello, M., Adams, R. B., Jr., Bahník, Š., Bernstein, M. J., . . . Nosek, B. A. (2014). Investigating variation in replicability: A “many labs” replication project. Social Psychology, 45(3), 142-152.

Senju, A., & Csibra, G. (2008) Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Current Biology, 18, 668-671.

Group Authors

Multlilab Gaze-Following Group

Authors

• Krista Byers-Heinlein, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Leher Singh, National University of Singapore
  Non-Presenting Author