Lookit: Online interface for large-scale developmental studies

研究婴儿如何学习以及他们的认知能力如何在整个发展过程中变化是全国许多大学正在进行的重要努力。 这项研究在很大程度上取决于父母谁有时间和资源与他们的孩子前往校园研究实验室志愿参与研究。 这些志愿者父母是研究的宝贵贡献者，但他们只代表社会的一小部分。 许多家庭的父母都是双职工，缺乏方便的交通工具去校园，或者住得离任何研究型大学都很远，这限制了他们参与学习的机会。这限制了志愿者的规模，也限制了研究结果的普遍性。 该研究项目的目标是开发一种在线测试工具，可以在父母方便的情况下在婴儿家中进行，并测试该工具，以确保实验室研究中常见的结果可以通过在线测试复制。 舒尔茨博士和她的研究小组建议开发的在线实验室将通过一个名为“Lookit”的网站访问。该网站将允许世界各地的家庭参与有关认知发展的科学研究。 家庭将通过他们的网络浏览器访问Lookit，并可以选择可用的5-10分钟的研究。 选择参与的父母将通过网络摄像头给予口头授权，他们的孩子的反应（从看行为到指向口头反应）将被记录下来。 在研究结束时，父母可以选择是否将视频文件传输到麻省理工学院儿童早期认知实验室的安全服务器上。 因此，Lookit将实现大规模参与。该网络平台将通过复制6个4个月至5岁儿童的既定发展结果进行验证。 一旦得到验证，该工具将普遍提供给认知发展研究界，Lookit将减少许多传统的研究障碍，包括涉及大样本量、窄年龄范围、特殊人群和社会经济多样性人群的研究的难度。 Lookit还将为STEM教育和推广提供一个新的渠道：一个资源页面将以外行人可以访问的格式提供有关认知发展的信息。

Studies of how infants learn and how their cognitive abilities change across development are important endeavors being undertaken at many universities across the country. This research depends largely on parents who have the time and resources to travel with their children to campus research laboratories to volunteer to participate in studies. These volunteer parents are invaluable contributors to research, however they represent only a small segment of society. Many families have dual-earner parents, lack easy transportation to campuses, or live far away from any research university, limiting their opportunities to participate in studies. This limits the size of the pool of volunteers and also the generalizability of the research results. The goal of this research project is to develop a tool for online testing that can take place in infants' homes at parents' convenience and to test the tool to ensure that results commonly found in laboratory studies can be replicated through online testing. The online laboratory that Dr. Schulz and her research team propose to develop will be accessed through a website called "Lookit". The site will allow families all over the world to participate in scientific research about cognitive development. Families will access Lookit through their web browser and can choose among available 5-10 minute studies. Parents who choose to participate will give verbal authorization via webcam and their children's responses (ranging from looking behavior to pointing to verbal responses) will be recorded. At the end of the study, parents can choose whether to transmit the video files to a secure server in the MIT Early Childhood Cognition Lab. Lookit will thus enable large-scale participation. The web platform will be validated by replicating six established developmental findings children 4 months through 5 years of age. Once validated, the tool will be made generally available to the cognitive development research community.Lookit will reduce many traditional barriers to research, including the difficulty of running studies involving large sample sizes, narrow age ranges, special populations, and socioeconomically diverse populations. Lookit will also provide a new outlet for STEM education and outreach: a resource page will provide information about cognitive development in a format accessible to the layperson.