At the Birmingham BabyLab we use a range of methods to find out more about infants’ and children’s development.
Looking Behaviour Paradigms
We show some interesting videos or pictures on a screen and measure how long the babies look at each of them. These studies can help us understand whether babies prefer one of the multiple visual stimuli presented to them or whether they discriminate "new" stimuli from "old" stimuli that they have been shown before.
Eye Tracking
Eye tracking uses a special camera to track baby’s eye movements when they are looking at a screen. In this way we can learn how much time babies spend looking at each part of a visual scene and what they find most interesting in it and this will help us finding out how they learn about the world around them.
EEG
EEG allows us to measure the natural brain activity produced by the brain. This activity is produced by all of us as we think and can be recorded by way of passive sensors that are gently placed on the head. This technique can teach us when and how the brain develops and can help us to learn which areas of the brain are involved in different behaviours.
Research Ethics
All of our studies are approved by the ethics committees at the University of Birmingham. Information about your baby is confidential and all data is kept anonymous. Personal details will be securely stored and kept only for the purpose stated. You can ask for your details to be removed from our database at any time.