Babies' Expectations About Racial Interactions (BEARI)

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

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Infant Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Basic Science

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 Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 128
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Illinois
    • Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60637
      • Infant Learning and Development Laboratory at University of Chicago

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 8 months to 1 year (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

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 Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Quadruple

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: White-White; 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.	Other: Basic Science; This is a basic science experiment to test whether infants' looking time to video stimuli differ according to the race of the individuals shown.
Experimental: Black-Black; The procedure is identical to the "White-White" arm except the two adults infants see will be two Black adults.	Other: Basic Science; This is a basic science experiment to test whether infants' looking time to video stimuli differ according to the race of the individuals shown.
Experimental: Black-White; The procedure is identical to the "White-White" arm except the two adults infants see will be one White and one Black adult.	Other: Basic Science; This is a basic science experiment to test whether infants' looking time to video stimuli differ according to the race of the individuals shown.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Participants' Average Time Spent Looking at Stimuli According to Condition	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.	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.

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Chicago
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Hyesung G Hwang, PhD, University of Chicago

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 1, 2021
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 27, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): March 27, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 1, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 8, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): April 12, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 24, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 22, 2024
• Last Verified: April 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: IRB18-1257

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: All data that was used in analysis will be shared publicly on Open Science Framework repository.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: Once data has been collected and cleaned it will be available to the public indefinitely.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: Anonymized individual participant data will be publicly available for anyone to access on Open Science Framework repository.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; SAP; ICF; ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No