Consent for Participation in Research

Invitation to Participation: You are invited to participate in a linguistics experiment. You have been invited because your linguistic background is of scientific interest to the investigators. You may decline to participate if you wish at any point during your time in the lab without consequence. To help you decide, you should know enough about the general purpose, risks and benefits to make an informed judgment. This consent form provides information about the procedures of the experiment. Once you understand the procedures, you will be asked if you wish to participate; if ‘yes’, you will be asked to sign this informed consent.

Description of Procedure: In this experiment, you will listen to English sentences. For the purposes of this test, all words have been removed – you will only hear the melody of the sentence. For each audio there is one question in which you must answer if what you just heard is a "QUESTION" or a "STATEMENT" via mouse-click. The experiment will not take longer than 17 minutes.

Purpose of Research: The principal researcher is Thales N. Buzan, a PhD student at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil) and former visiting student at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese under the supervision of Professor Laura Colantoni. The general purpose of the experiment is to understand how we utter and perceive speech sounds and how we process language more generally.

Risks/Benefits: There are no physical or psychological risks or discomforts. There is no direct benefit to participating in this research. You may request information about the experimental findings or materials produced as a consequence of the public dissemination (i.e., presentation, publication) of this research upon completion of your participation. The researcher will also notify you if she or he has debriefing materials that are intended to help you understand the aims of the current work.

Compensation: Participants will not receive any compensation.

Confidentiality: Your name will be recorded on the consent form and one electronic file that links your name with a random, numeric code. This code will be used in the data analysis. No personally identifying information will appear in subsequent scholarly presentations or publications. Other personal information gathered in this study will not be disclosed to any individual other than the principal investigator. The consent form and electronic file will be securely stored in accordance with the norms of Participant Data Confidentiality at the University of Toronto. The anonymized data will be kept indefinitely. If you consent, you are also consenting to having your anonymized research data shared with scientific community via Open Science Framework or Dataverse. This data will contain no personally identifiable information and your identity will not be accessible to aside from the principal investigator.

Voluntary Participation & Withdrawal: Your participation is voluntary. You are free to choose not to participate, and, if you do decide to participate, you are free to withdraw from the experiment at any time. Should you decide to withdraw, you may do so without jeopardizing any of the following that may apply to you: opportunities to serve as a participant in future experiments, or your standing as a student if you are a student. If you decide to withdraw, your data will be destroyed. Note that you may not withdraw once you have completed the experiment.

Questions: Before signing this form, please ask the experimenter any questions that will help you decide whether to take part; however, we will defer answering questions that may influence your performance in the study until you have completed your participation. You may take as much time as you want to decide whether to take part in this study.

I have read this form and decided that I will participate in the experiment described above. Its general purpose, procedure, possible risks and benefits have been explained to my satisfaction. Also, by consenting to participate, I agree to have my anonymized data shared with other researchers via the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io) or Dataverse (University of Toronto Libraries). This data will be completely anonymous and contain no personally identifiable information. My signature also indicates that I have been offered a copy of this consent form.

If you have further questions, please contact the principal investigator, Thales N. Buzan (thales.buzan@estudante.ufjf.br). If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Office of Research Ethics, CEP - Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa com Seres Humanos - UFJF, Campus Universitário da UFJF, Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa, CEP: 36036-900, Fone: +55 (32) 2102- 3788 / E-mail: cep.propp@ufjf.br