Infant Looking Time Paradigm Designer

Purpose

This skill encodes expert methodological knowledge for designing infant looking-time studies, including habituation, preferential-looking, and violation-of-expectation paradigms. It provides age-appropriate timing parameters, habituation criteria, exclusion standards, and coding reliability benchmarks that require specialized training in developmental methodology. A general-purpose programmer would not know the appropriate trial durations by age, when to expect novelty versus familiarity preferences, or how to set habituation criteria.

When to Use This Skill

• Designing a new habituation study for infants of a specific age
• Setting up a preferential-looking paradigm (side-by-side or central fixation)
• Creating a violation-of-expectation study to test infant knowledge
• Choosing age-appropriate timing parameters (trial duration, ITI, attention-getters)
• Establishing exclusion criteria and coding reliability standards
• Deciding between online (webcam-based) and in-lab testing
• Determining sample size and expected effect sizes for infant studies

Research Planning Protocol

Before executing the domain-specific steps below, you MUST: