Bringing Infant Language Research Home: Developing Sensitive Online Methods for Studying Early Speech Perception

As developmental science becomes more inclusive and ecologically valid, remote and online testing of infants is gaining momentum. Studying infants in their home environments holds promise: it reduces the burden on families, increases accessibility to underrepresented populations, and may yield more naturalistic behavior compared to lab settings. However, testing preverbal infants remotely comes with significant methodological challenges. Unlike older children or adults, infants cannot press buttons or follow verbal instructions, but we must rely on indirect measures such as gaze patterns. While online platforms are improving in their capacity to record and analyze infant gaze (e.g., via webcam), capturing sensitive indicators of language development such as speech sound discrimination remains difficult. This internship aims to pilot and evaluate new methods for conducting remote studies on early speech perception. Students will: Review the existing literature on infant gaze-based paradigms (e.g., headturn preference, preferential looking, habituation) Identify promising designs for remote implementation Select and adapt speech stimuli for online presentation Program and pilot an online experiment (e.g., using Lookit) Conduct exploratory data collection and analysis to assess feasibility and sensitivity This project sits at the intersection of developmental psychology, experimental design, and digital methods. Interns will gain hands-on experience in experimental programming, psycholinguistic theory, and webcam-based data collection. The broader goal is to expand the reach of infant research while preserving scientific rigor; an essential step in scaling cognitive science beyond the lab.