Overview
Welcome to the ºìÐÓÊÓƵ Baby and Child Lab! We are passionate about understanding how babies grow, learn, and develop. Through our studies, we explore various aspects of child development, such as cognitive skills (e.g., speech and language development, face perception), emotions, and social interactions (e.g., imitation behaviours).
We are always inviting children from all ages (0 - 12 years old) to participate in our studies.
Register your child now and join our journey to better knowledge! Our team will contact you if your child is eligible for any of our studies.
Behaviour Observation Studies
These studies are designed to be game-like, interactive, and fun with your child. Through these interactions, we will observe how children respond or interact with the experimenter.
Habituation and Preferential Looking
We use this method to test whether babies can tell the difference between two stimuli (either sounds or images). Babies are played with stimulus until they get bored and look away. If they show renewed interest when a second stimulus is played, this is perceived as being able to tell the difference between the two.
Eye-tracking task
A special screen and eye tracking camera tracks a child’s eye movement, telling us where your child is looking at the screen. By analysing their eye movement, we can understand how they make sense of the world around them.
Information for Kindergartens and ºìÐÓÊÓƵ
Since 2008, we have had many successes collaborating with kindergartens, schools, and daycares. While ºìÐÓÊÓƵ Baby and Child Lab continues to strive for knowledge on the development of children, we wish to have your students on board with us on this meaningful journey.
Our lab is always open to working with schools and centres to understanding more about out children through research. As an appreciation to our long-term collaborating schools for your contribution to children developmental research, we offer an annual talk at our university along with a certificate of collaboration with ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University and ºìÐÓÊÓƵ Baby and Child Lab.
Please contact @email for more information and further discussion in regards to collaboration!
Information for parents
What to Expect?
Our research assistants will contact you to screen your child’s eligibility for our studies. If your child is eligible, you will be invited to the lab and scheduled at a time that works best for you. Sessions are generally done on Mondays to Saturdays between 8:30am to 5:30pm. One study would last 20-30 minutes, but we would recommend you to allocate one hour for the session in order for us to explain the study to you and answer your questions before you sign a consent form as well as getting your child comfortable with us before beginning the session. Please refer to the image below for better understanding.
Eligibility: Who is eligible?
You and your child are eligible if:
You are the parent or caregiver of a child.
The pregnancy, birth, and baby’s development is normal.
Your child is between 0 - 12 years old.
Risks: Are there any risks involved?
The risks in these studies are minimal. All studies went through a thorough procedure of ethical considerations and have received ethical approvals from the university ethics research committee.
Confidentiality and Data
All sessions will be recorded for the purpose of analysis by our research staff. All videos and personal data will be kept strictly confidential in our high security password-protected database. All results will be compiled and no individual results will be available.
Reimbursement
To reimburse you for your time and effort, you will receive the following:
A travel allowance on each visit.
A small appreciation gift.
A child degree on each visit
1st visit: Bachelor’s degree
2nd visit: Master’s degree
3rd visit: PhD Degree
Our Past Research
Our Past Research
Face Perception Study
How do babies perceive faces that they are familiar and unfamiliar with? When do they become experts in recognising faces? Through a series of studies taking place at Lancaster University (United Kingdom) and ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University (Malaysia), we are hoping to answer questions like these. Dr Diana Tham and Prof. Gavin Bremner, Lancaster University (UK) and Dr. Woo Pei Jun, ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University (MY) conducted a cross-cultural comparison on face perception ability in infants living in a single-race country (e.g., the UK) and a multi-race country (e.g., Malaysia).
Emotional development
Infants as young as 3 months are able to recognise specific emotional expressions when the expression is displayed on the face, voice or body posture. To understand how these processes develop, we presented infants with a series of photographs, or audio playbacks of various emotions and record their brain responses and eye gaze. This is a joint research project between ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University, Prof. Ted Ruffman from University of Otago (New Zealand), Assoc Prof. Rozainee Khairudin (UKM), and Assoc Prof. Alex Schaefer from Monash University Malaysia.
Empathic development
Toddlers around 18 months olds may feel distressed themselves when observing another in distress. But when do infants develop this ability in recognising distress in another, and what are their responses to the distress? Here, we investigate these questions with behavioural observations (e.g. role plays), and physiological (brain responses, eye gaze, salivary cortisol, heart rate). This is a joint research project between Dr. Yong from ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University and Dr. Elena Geangu from Lancaster University (UK).
Imitation Behaviours
Read the full article here:
Word Learning Study
Together with Professor Denis Burnham from MARCS Baby Lab at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, Dr. Woo Pei Jun from ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University studied how 17-month-old infants’ learn pairs of native (Malay Mandarin) and pairs non-native word-like sounds based on tonal (pitch) differences, or phone (consonant or vowel differences). This is one of the many series of studies that we conduct to understand how babies learn languages from their environment.
Infant Tone Perception (Language Study)
Babies may not be able to speak yet, but from the early months of life, infants are learning a lot about speech and language. Each language uses a unique set of speech sounds. Scientists now know that at birth, babies have the ability to distinguish all of these speech sounds, but that ability decreases rapidly if they don’t have regular exposure to those sounds. Dr. Woo Pei Jun, Dr. Karen Mattock and Elaine Yong investigated how infants come to recognise and distinguish between speech sounds in Mandarin, as well as how development may differ for babies growing up hearing more than one language. The focus of the research is on the perception of Mandarin speech sounds, especially tones. This study is a collaborative project between researchers from ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University (MY) and University of Western Sydney (Australia).
The Team
Registration
You can register your child's details .
What happens after you’ve registered?
Our researchers will contact you when there is a suitable study for your child. We will explain to you about the study, and invite you to join if you are interested!
Or alternatively via:
Contact:
ºìÐÓÊÓƵ Baby and Child Lab
School of Psychology
No. 5, Jalan Universiti, Bandar ºìÐÓÊÓƵ,
47500 Selangor.
Email: [email protected]
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