Toddlers' Responses to Strangers

Recruiting

• Conditions: Social Behavior

• Registration Number: NCT06550206
• Lead Sponsor: University of California Santa Cruz

Brief Summary

The study will assess if toddlers show differences in stranger wariness according to race, temperament, social network diversity, and neighborhood diversity.

Detailed Description

This study is investigating 13- to 24-month-old toddlers' reactions to meeting new people from familiar and unfamiliar racial backgrounds! Participation involves a 1-hour one-time visit to the researcher's lab, located on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

The study itself will take about 20 minutes, but will ask for a 1-hour visit to make sure child participants feel comfortable in the new space. The study will video record as child participants interact with two adults, who will play with the child and offer toys. Parent participants will also be asked to complete two surveys, one demographic survey and one social network survey, so that investigators can better understand how the people children see in their daily lives relate to how participants react to strangers from different racial backgrounds.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2024-07-30
• Study First Submitted: 2024-08-06
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-08-09
• Study First Posted: 2024-08-12
• Status Verified: 2025-03
• Last Update Submitted: 2025-03-06
• Last Update Posted: 2025-03-11
• Primary Completion: 2025-10
• Study Completion: 2025-10

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 100

Inclusion Criteria

• typically developing
• age 13-24 months

Exclusion Criteria

• any known developmental delays

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Social Wariness	Through study completion, an average of 10 years	children's social wariness as assessed by the time that the child first vocalized, touched the stranger, and the duration of time that the child stayed near their parent in seconds standardized and averaged to create a composite score.
Social Preference	Through study completion, an average of 10 years	Social preference will be coded by observing toddler behavior and assigning the following codes: 1 = did not take the toy from either stranger, 2 = took toy from familiar race stranger, 3 = took toy from unfamiliar race stranger, 4 = took toy or played with both strangers simultaneously.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Social Science 2 Building; 🇺🇸 Santa Cruz, California, United States