Stanford Language and Cognition Lab

This is an experiment about how people understand different kinds of sentences. In this experiment, you will see pictures of different characters with different objects. You will see a sentence about one of the characters. Your job is to decide if it is a good sentence, or a bad sentence!

Legal information: By answering the following questions, you are participating in a study being performed by developmental psychologists in the Stanford Department of Psychology. If you have questions about this research, please contact us at languagecoglab@gmail.com. You must be at least 18 years old to participate. Your participation in this research is voluntary. You may decline to answer any or all of the following questions. You may decline further participation, at any time, without adverse consequences. Your anonymity is assured; the researchers who have requested your participation will not receive any personal information about you.

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Please make sure that your computer's sound is at an appropriate volume.
We will first begin with a sound test to confirm working audio.

To begin, press the button below.
Test Sound

In this experiment, you will see four tables that belong to four different Sesame Street muppets. Some of the Sesame Street characters will have objects on their table. A red box will appear around one of the muppets. The sentence below the characters is about the character in the red box.

Your job is to rate how good the sentence is. If no one would ever say a particular sentence in this context, or if it is just wrong, rank that as "Very Bad"; but if something is right and sounds perfectly normal, mark it as "Very Good". Try to use the whole scale to make your ratings.

The stars at the top of the screen are a progress bar, letting you know how many trials remain.

Please answer a few questions about yourself.