Given the limited ways available to study preverbal human infants, researchers have used infants’ looking behaviour to infer their perceptual and cognitive abilities. An important related process is habituation, or infants’ tendency to spend less time looking at objects presented repeatedly. In this study, we adopt a many-analysts approach to explore infant visual habituation using a large-scale, multi-lab looking times dataset (N = 3881) from ManyBabies 1, 3, and 4. 

We recruit multiple expert researchers to form teams and investigate three exploratory research questions: the shape of the habituation curve, individual differences in habituation, and the influence of different methodological and measurement choices. In a two-stage process, the analysis teams first discuss the current state of habituation research and determine research questions, and then execute their planned analysis, draw conclusions, and submit a written report. Finally, we synthesise the results across teams and find patterns of convergence relating to key characteristics of infant habituation.