The current global pandemic makes the development of remote methods to test participants in their home urgent, since labs relying on assessing infant gaze behavior are facing a situation where, potentially for a prolonged period of time, it will not be possible to invite families for testing. Discussion on diverse mailing lists shows that multiple labs are considering adopting online methods.
This idea is not new and the past years have seen a push towards developing remote, online methods to bring infant experiments to their families' homes. Such methods would have, in all circumstances, been a highly promising avenue towards better powered, more ecologically valid, and diverse samples.
Our goal is to pool efforts towards developing a framework for "AtHome" studies that researchers across universities and countries can adopt with relative ease. We will evaluate existing solutions as well as work towards developing new ones as needed and feasible. At the same time, we will work towards best practices in procedure, documentation, and analysis.
We write to accomplish the following:
- Assess what is needed for remote methods to be useful for infant researchers
- Gauge interest in pooling efforts to work towards a generalized framework and protocol
- Notify you of our efforts, and an upcoming call for participation in a large-scale test
We thus ask all infant researchers to fill in this poll, which can be done anonymously. We would very much appreciate all feedback.
https://forms.gle/4mZT3SYp8dSMvt4x9
With warm regards and best wishes for your safety,
Sho Tsuji
Christina Bergmann
Rhodri Cusack
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk
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Sho Tsuji
Tokyo
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