Babies' Brain Responses to Strangers

The Malleability of Social Group Understanding in Infancy and Early Childhood

Researchers at the Diversity in Development Lab at UC Santa Cruz are investigating how babies' brain activities respond to people from familiar and unfamiliar racial backgrounds.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Infant Development
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Infants observing familiar and unfamiliar racial groups

Detailed Description

The goal of this observational study is to learn how infants' brain activities, as captured by EEG, differ for familiar or unfamiliar racial group in typically developing infants. The main questions of the study are:

• Will infants show greater event-related desynchronization (i.e., more motor system activation), frontal theta synchronization (i.e., more attention), and more positive frontal alpha asymmetry (i.e., more approach motivation) to familiar than unfamiliar racial group?
• How does infants' exposure to racial diversity in their social network and neighborhoods relate to these EEG activities? Participants will visit a laboratory at the UC Santa Cruz campus for this study. Infants will put an EEG cap on and watch about 15 minutes of videos, in which people from different racial backgrounds do different actions (e.g., grabbing an object, saying hi and approaching closer, and playing peek-a-boo). Caregivers will be asked to fill out a demographic form and a social network survey.

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Estimated): 100

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Seaera Juarez, BA; Phone Number: (831) 264-8155; Email: did.lab@ucsc.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Santa Cruz, California, United States, 95064
      • Recruiting
      • Social Science 2 Building
      • Contact: Seaera Juarez, BA; Phone Number: (831) 264-8155; Email: did.lab@ucsc.edu
      • Contact: Hyesung Hwang, PhD
      • Contact: Samantha Fong, BA

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

community sample from the larger Santa Cruz area

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• typically developing
• age 7 to 12 months
• at least 37 weeks gestation

Exclusion Criteria:

• any known developmental delays
• less than 37 weeks gestation

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Mu event related desynchronization	EEG oscillation in alpha power over central regions	Through study completion, an average of 10 years.
Frontal theta synchronization	EEG oscillation in theta power over frontal regions	Through study completion, an average of 10 years.
Frontal alpha asymmetry	left and right hemispheric difference in EEG oscillation in alpha power in the frontal regions	Through study completion, an average of 10 years.

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of California Santa Cruz
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Hyesung Hwang, PhD, University of California Santa Cruz

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Hwang HG, Debnath R, Meyer M, Salo VC, Fox NA, Woodward A. Neighborhood racial demographics predict infants' neural responses to people of different races. Dev Sci. 2021 Jul;24(4):e13070. doi: 10.1111/desc.13070. Epub 2020 Dec 16.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 23, 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 13, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 3, 2025
• Last Verified: March 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: HS-FY2023-23 Study 2

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: All IPD that are anonymized and underlie results in a publication will be shared through open science framework (OSF)
• 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