Babies' Expectations About Racial Interactions (BEARI)

The University of Chicago

Status

Completed

Conditions

Infant Behavior

Treatments

Other: Basic Science

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT05324007

IRB18-1257

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will examine whether infants view race as an inductively useful social cue to predict third-party social relationships.

Full description

Based on findings that infants expect more affiliation between same language speakers than different language speakers (i.e., infants will look longer at affiliation between different language speakers than same language speakers), this study will assess whether infants' expectations about intra- and inter-racial interactions will also follow the same pattern as language. After informed consent, participants who meet the eligibility requirements will be randomized into one of the 3 conditions: Watching (1) two White adults affiliating and disengaging, (2) two Black adults affiliating and disengaging, and (3) one White and one Black adults affiliating and disengaging.

Enrollment

128 patients

Sex

All

Ages

8 to 14 months old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

full term (at least 37 weeks at birth)
no known developmental delays

Exclusion criteria

not full term (less than 37 weeks at birth)
known developmental delays

Trial design

Primary purpose

Basic Science

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Quadruple Blind

128 participants in 3 patient groups

White-White

Experimental group

Description:

Infants will first view 4 familiarization trials, in which the two adults each take turns waving and saying a short sentence. Each trial will last 10.5s. Which adult speaks first and which side she appears on will be counterbalanced. These familiarization trials will ensure infants encode each person separately. Then infants will watch 6 test trials (3 affiliation and 3 disengagement). The test trials will alternate, and the order will be counterbalanced across infants. In affiliation trials, the two adults will say "hello" and wave, whereas in the disengagement trials, the two adults will say "hmph", and turn away from each other. Both affiliation and disengagement will have the same length (3s), with actors maintaining the same distance from each other throughout the video. The procedure will be identical for all arms except in "White-White" arm, the two adults infants see will be two White adults.

Treatment:

Other: Basic Science

Black-Black

Experimental group

Description:

The procedure is identical to the "White-White" arm except the two adults infants see will be two Black adults.

Treatment:

Other: Basic Science

Black-White

Experimental group

Description:

The procedure is identical to the "White-White" arm except the two adults infants see will be one White and one Black adult.