What we are doing

We are trying to find out which aspects of language have a genetic basis and which have to be learned from parents. To this end, we are conducting a long-term study of language development, starting from twins' first words and continuing until the twins are 3 or 4 years old. In order to do this, we ask parents of twins to keep track of certain milestones in their children's language. For this purpose we send out checklists, which are detailed lists containing descriptions of things to listen for and a place to note the date and which twin said what. (To find out more about the study, click here.)

What we ask you to do

If you are waiting for the twins' first words, we would ask you to keep these checklists handy and note when your children start saying their first words and what those words are. Once your twins are beyond their first 50 or so words and begin to make short sentences--or if your twins are already onto the small-sentence stage--we ask you to put aside an hour or so each day to fill out more checklists. This should not interfere too much with your normal activities, but you will have to set aside this time to pay extra attention to your children's language.

We would continue to give you detailed instructions and checklists. We also provide stamped envelopes for you to send the checklists back to our lab, supply new checklists as necessary, and call you every few weeks to see how things are going. At the end of the study, you would receive the profile of your children's language development and the results of the study.

Compensation for our subjects

Though our resources are limited, we try to give parents some token compensations along the way to show our gratitude for their help in this study. We offer a one-time payment of $50 or, if you are not sure of your twins' zygosity, we will pay to have zygosity testing done. At the end of the study, we will send you a pair of appropriately sized MIT Twins Study T-shirts for your twins and a personalized parent report of your twin's language growth while they were in the study.

If you are interested in participating, you can...

The MIT Twins Study
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, NE20-427
Cambridge, MA 02139

We look forward to hearing from you!