This summer, we were able to complete the first part of a series of studies in the Babelfish lab, which are being conducted worldwide by 220 research directions in 46 different countries as part of the international "Many Babies" research project. This huge scale allows to test a very large number of children of different age groups in one and the same study - more than a single laboratory could do. At the same time, it allows a targeted comparison of, for example, different linguistic backgrounds.

In the eye-tracking study we conducted, we investigated how well children between 7 and 12 months can acquire simple artificial grammar. The children listened to simple syllable combinations while we recorded their eye movements. This allowed us to measure how long they focused their attention on the known or unknown syllable combinations.

Thank you very much to all the kids and their families for their participation! It was a great pleasure for us to work with the little language researchers!