Baby Media Viewing
Infant-Directed Videos
Puppet Game
Rattle Game
Touchscreen Game

With the growing influence of media in today's culture, it becomes increasingly important for us to understand the effects that television and movies have on both the learning and the memory of infants. What are they learning from television, and in what ways is this information being processed? The Early Learning Project aims to uncover these and more of the mysteries about infant learning and memory. This research can have implications for the learning and memory process that occur in the everyday lives of children through having stories read to them, and observing and imitating older siblings and parents. It can also serve as a tool in developing educational programs that will best suit children of appropriate ages.

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Ongoing Studies

Currently we are focusing our research on understanding how children under the age of 2 interact with various media sources such as:

Television: As many parents have told us, television is a part of their babies' lives. Whether it is used as a distraction during mealtime or as a source of entertainment and learning, almost all babies are exposed to television at a very early age. Yet little is known about how babies interact with television. The goal of our research is to understand better the necessary components of this interaction and how it may change across the second year of life.

Books: Many parents view books as an important part of their babies lives. Whether reading before naptime or flipping through picture books, many chlidren are exposed to this type of media from very early on. Our goal in studying books is to understand how well children under the age of 2 transfer this information from a 2-D page to the real 3-D world.

Screen media: Aside from television, infants may also be exposed to other screen media such as computers, video games, and interactive toys. Similar to our book studies, we are attempting to understand how well children are able to transfer the information they receive on a screen to the real world.

More specifically, the Early Learning Project is currently focusing on the questions below.

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What happens during the visit?

Dr. Rachel Barr established this program and works with graduate students, undergraduate students, and a stall of full-time research assistants in conducting the studies. Participation in studies is completely voluntary, and we rely solely on parent-child volunteers. We try to make the studies as convenient as possible, by coming to the parent and child's home at a time that is appropriate for them. Each study includes 1-2 visits of about 15 minutes each, at a time of the day when the baby is alert and ready to play. During these 15 minutes we will ask you to go through a series of tasks with your baby. The purpose of the tasks is to observe whether babies learn or are more likely to remember and imitate live demonstrations or video demonstrations.

This program presents a great opportunity for you and your baby to contribute to the research of the capabilities of infants as a whole. If you are interested in learning more about the program or volunteering for a study we urge you to contact us and participate in this great learning experience. We look forward to meeting you and your baby!

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Parent & Childcare Forms

Here are links to some of our online questionnaires and surveys. Filling these out is very important for many of our studies and needed for final data analyses. Thank you so much!

1. Click here for the Parent Questionnaire

2. Click here for the In-home Childcare Questionnaire

3. Click here for the Childcare Center Questionnaire

If you are unsure about which form to fill out please email earlylearning@georgetown.edu or give us a call at 202.687.6988.

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