Participate in our research for 4-5 year olds!

Welcome to the language and memory animal games! In these online games, you and your child will play a set of three colouring games, and interact with different types of animals in two memory games.

Why we are running this study

How do memory and language interact throughout development? This study will help us compare different general cognitive processes and their role in children’s language acquisition.

What happens during this study

In this first part, your child will meet some friends who have some items to color in, and your child will tap the colours on the screen to color in the items.
The other two coloring games will have a similar format, first with some dogs, and then with a pair of silly monkeys.

In the colouring games, your child will meet some friends who have some items to color in, and your child will tap the colours on the screen to color in the items. Each of the colouring games will take about 20 minutes to complete, and we are interested in how your child colours in the pictures. Their choices may be the same or different from your own, but please let your child make their own choices about how to interpret the instructions.

Next, your child will play two memory games with some animals. This second part of this study will also take about 20 minutes, with about 10 minutes for each of the two games.

The games do not need to be completed at the same time, and you and your child may take any breaks as needed during or between the games.
We ask that you complete all of the games within one week; this may be on different days throughout the week.

Participation is voluntary

You and your child are free to choose whether to be in this study. If you do choose to participate, it’s okay to stop at any point during the sessions. Please do pause or stop the session if your child becomes fussy or does not want to participate!

What are the risks?

There are no expected risks if you participate in the study.

What are the benefits?

After you finish all of the parts of the study, we will send a certificate of participation to thank you for helping us find out about children’s language.
You will receive your certificate via email within one week of participation, and we will send a certificate even if we are not able to use your child’s data!
There are no other direct benefits to you or your child from participating, but we hope you will enjoy the experience.

Data collection and webcam recording

During the session, you and your child will be recorded by your computer’s webcam and microphone.

Data are stored securely on Sharepoint servers, and are only shared as described on this page. However, there is always a small risk that data transmitted over the internet may be intercepted or that the security of stored data may be compromised.

How we use your data

If you participate in this study, we (the research group led by Juliana Gerard at Ulster University) will have access to

• webcam recordings and other data collected during this session
• your account profile and demographic survey
• the child profile for the child who is participating

This includes changes you make in the future to any of this information. We may put different types of information together to learn more about child development. For instance, if your child participates in multiple studies from our group, we may look at how his or her responses compare across studies, or we may look at whether siblings tend to respond similarly. We may also study connections between children’s responses and family demographic survey data.

We are primarily interested in your child’s responses in the interactive games, and their interpretations of the sentences in the colouring games.

Your rights as a participant

You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study. If you feel you have been treated unfairly, or you have questions regarding your rights as a research subject, you may contact the Ulster University Risk and Ethics Committee and Nick Curry, Head of Research Governance at n.curry@ulster.ac.uk or +44 28 9536 5123.

How to reach us

This study is run by Juliana Gerard at Ulster University. If you or your child have any questions or concerns about this study, or in the very unlikely event of a research-related injury, please contact Juliana Gerard at j.gerard@ulster.ac.uk or 028 9536 5175.

If you consent to participate, click “Next” to start the colouring games!

After you complete these games, you will receive a link to the memory games in Part 2.