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.