Toddlers' Responses to Strangers (ISW)

The Malleability of Social Group Understanding in Infancy and Early Childhood

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

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Social Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Children's stranger wariness response to strangers

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 Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Estimated): 100

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Seaera Juarez, BS; Phone Number: (760) 895-3878; Email: serjuare@ucsc.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Santa Cruz, California, United States, 95064
      • Recruiting
      • Social Science 2 Building
      • Contact: Ian Ferruci, BA; Phone Number: 831-264-8155; Email: did.lab@ucsc.edu
      • Principal Investigator: Hyesung Hwang, PhD
      • Sub-Investigator: Tobi Britton, BA

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Community sample from the larger Santa Cruz area

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• typically developing
• age 13-24 months

Exclusion Criteria:

- any known developmental delays

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Social Wariness	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.	Through study completion, an average of 10 years
Social Preference	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.	Through study completion, an average of 10 years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of California Santa Cruz
• Collaborators: New York University; University of Maryland, College Park
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Hyesung Hwang, PhD, University of California Santa Cruz

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Hwang HG, Filippi CA, Morales S, Fox NA, Woodward A. Children's social wariness toward a different-race stranger relates to individual differences in temperament. Dev Sci. 2023 Nov;26(6):e13390. doi: 10.1111/desc.13390. Epub 2023 Mar 24.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 30, 2024
• Primary Completion (Estimated): October 1, 2025
• Study Completion (Estimated): October 1, 2025

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: August 6, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 9, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): August 12, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 6, 2025
• Last Verified: March 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: HS-FY2023-23

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: All anonymized IPD data that underlie a publication will be shared after the study is published on open science framework.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: The data will become available within a period of 10 years. Anonymized aggregate data will be available indefinitely. No identifiable data will be shared.
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: All anonymized data will be available once study has been published and will be available indefinitely.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; SAP; 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
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No