Babies' Expectations About Racial Interactions

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Infant Behavior
• Interventions: Other: Basic Science

• Registration Number: NCT05324007
• Lead Sponsor: University of Chicago

Brief Summary

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

Detailed 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.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2021-09-01
• Primary Completion: 2022-03-27
• Study Completion: 2022-03-27
• Study First Submitted: 2022-04-01
• Study First Submitted QC: 2022-04-08
• Study First Posted: 2022-04-12
• Results First Submitted: 2022-05-31
• Status Verified: 2024-04
• Results First Submitted QC: 2024-04-22
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-04-22
• Results First Posted: 2024-04-24
• Last Update Posted: 2024-04-24

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 128

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

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

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

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Participants' Average Time Spent Looking at Stimuli According to Condition	After the infants completed the study (which lasted about 10 minutes), two coders viewed the video recording of the session to measure infants' looking at the affiliation and disengagement stimuli.	Infants' looking time to affiliation vs. disengagement stimuli was measured by two coders blind to the condition that infants were assigned to. Then, the values from each coders were compared and if there was disagreement, after discussion one value was selected. Thus, the reported outcome is the single value that both coders produced or agreed upon values from the two coders.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Infant Learning and Development Laboratory at University of Chicago; 🇺🇸 Chicago, Illinois, United States