The study will assess if toddlers show differences in stranger wariness according to race, temperament, social network diversity, and neighborhood diversity.
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
100
Children will see two strangers, one from a familiar racial background and one from an unfamiliar racial background. Familiar race stranger will be from the same racial background as the child's caregiver and unfamiliar race stranger will not.
Social Science 2 Building
Santa Cruz, California, United States
RECRUITINGSocial 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.
Time frame: 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.
Time frame: Through study completion, an average of 10 years
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