Lookit (Part 2): Assessing the Viability of Online Developmental Research, Results From Three Case Studies

Abstract

To help address the participant bottleneck in developmental research, we developed a new platform called “Lookit,” introduced in an accompanying article (Scott & Schulz, 2017 ), that allows families to participate in behavioral studies online via webcam. To evaluate the viability of the platform, we administered online versions of three previously published studies involving different age groups, methods, and research questions: an infant ( M = 14.0 months, N = 49) study of novel event probabilities using violation of expectation, a study of two-year-olds’ ( M = 29.2 months, N = 67) syntactic bootstrapping using preferential looking, and a study of preschoolers’ ( M = 48.6 months, N = 148) sensitivity to the accuracy of informants using verbal responses. Our goal was to evaluate the overall feasibility of moving developmental methods online, including our ability to host the research protocols, securely collect data, and reliably code the dependent measures, and parents’ ability to self-administer the studies. Due to procedural differences, these experiments should be regarded as user case studies rather than true replications. Encouragingly, however, all studies with all age groups suggested the feasibility of collecting developmental data online and the results of two of three studies were directly comparable to laboratory results.

The Developmental Origins of Syntactic Bootstrapping

“…assumes an input sentence about the “here and now,” offering simultaneous access to syntactic cues to the utterance's semantic structure and referential cues to the verb's semantic content. But this lucky coincidence is unnecessary: Toddlers gather syntactic‐distributional facts about otherwise unknown verbs from listening experience, independent of access to a useful referential context (Arunachalam, ; Arunachalam et al, ; Arunachalam & Waxman, ; Messenger et al, ; Scott, Chu, & Schulz, ; Scott & Fisher, ; Suzuki & Kobayashi, ; Yuan & Fisher, ). As a result, children can begin gathering evidence about each verb's syntactic behavior before they know what it means.…”

TheChildLab.com A Video Chat Platform for Developmental Research

“…In a paper describing the Lookit platform, the authors identify four key advantages to conducting developmental research online: increasing sample size, reaching special populations, scheduling repeated sessions, and supporting replication by facilitating the standardization and sharing of protocols . In an initial set of studies establishing the utility of computeradministered tasks online, Lookit was used to collect looking time data with infants and verbal response data with three-and four-year-olds (Scott, Chu, & Schulz, 2017).…”

Using automation to combat the replication crisis: A case study from controlled-rearing studies of newborn chicks

“…Many researchers in developmental psychology are already moving in this direction. For example, while it is not possible to experimentally test human infants 24/7, new automated internet-based platforms, such as "Lookit", allow families to participate in behavioral studies via webcam (51,52). Thus, researchers can begin recruiting larger numbers of infants and collecting repeated measurements.…”