Playing the game!
Prior to when we start, we'll ask for your - the parents' - and the child's consent to take part in our study. That's an important step we take in accordance with the guidelines of the University of Oxford's Research Ethics Committee to safeguard all participants when taking part in scientific studies.
Before the actual Treasure Hunt game starts, your child will complete a series of short task where s/he has to remember as many numbers as possible from strings of numbers which gradually increase in length. This is a common procedure in language psychology research to assess children' working memory.
At this stage, please make sure that the laptop's sound is switched on and that your child is wearing headphones!
Our study is designed to investigate how children learn a new language while playing a game. The idea is to learn while having fun. To this end, the games that your child will play are meant to teach him/her new words in a foreign language without any adult help!
After the number memorisation task, your child will complete another quick task where s/he listens to a word and then has to chose the target object from a grid of objects. Similar to the number memorisation task, such a procedure is common in language psychology research.
Now the actual Treasure Hunt game starts! Your child will hear instructions and start playing the game. If you like, you can view the game on YouTube.
While we keep the game engaging and fun, this doesn't mean necessarily that it's always going to be easy. There might be parts of the game that your child might consider challenging, and therefore s/he will make more mistakes. That's normal. Although we instinctively feel frustrated from our mistakes just remember that errors are ultimately your child's friends; they have the potential to teach her/him more than their correct answers can!
We assume that you, as parent/guardian, will be always present or nearby while your child is playing so that you can make sure that s/he knows what they should be doing while interacting with the computer. At the same time, you shouldn't be able to hear the words yourself as your child will be wearing headphones. This is important because we want to learn how children are able to figure out the words by themselves, without any help from an adult. So please make sure that you can't hear the computer yourself while the child is playing the games, so that you don't accidentally give them any clues!
