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The name is a recursive acronym for the babex system (pronounced as: Bay-Beks), feel free to end the recursion by accepting the alternative name Baby Experiment system.
In the UiL OTS laboratories we use to invite infants to studies in which we examine infants reaction to exposure of linguistic stimuli. Children are gifted to acquire languages of any kind spoken in the world. The ability to understand and produce speech grows as they grow older. On the other hand, when humans mature, they lose some of the abilities to learn to acquire a language natively, and their minds are getting accustomed to one or more specific language(s). Since infants develop rapidly during the first year, we would need to study children in an experiment at a very specific age.
The main participant in a baby language experiment is the infant, who comes along with her/his to the Babylab with its parents/caregivers. For some (longitudinal) experiments the infant is invited multiple times for one specific experiment/or for a related experiment. The experimenters run the experiment, and help scheduling the experimental session. The researcher is the one who designed an experiment and will analyze the data produced by the experiment. Experimenters have contact with participants for (multiple) experiment(s), and researchers mainly look at the output. Finally, the system administrators that maintain the infrastructure of the lab and websites.
An experiment is carried out with infants meeting certain characteristics, such as age, native language or other variables. An experiment has a specific name and is ran in a given lab e.g. the babylab, baby EEG lab, or the baby eyetracking lab. Only certain experimenters may be assigned to one experiment because an experiment requires training of the experimenter. Typically, an experiment is carried out on behalf of one researcher.
The babylab has an agenda, in which time slots can be booked. A booking consist of a participant, an experimenter and a lab. The agenda helps with assigning children that meet the requirements of an experiment e.g. they are at the moment of testing not to old/young for an experiment. In summary, the agenda helps to make sure that the lab is available and there is an experimenter present to conduct the experiment session.
The babex system helps experimenters to conduct an experiment by allowing to plan an experimental session with an infant, lab and experimenter available.