What has the Read Lab been up to this summer, you ask?

So. Much. Fun. Research.

Summer kicked of in Amsterdam, where Dr. Read presented a talk to developmental psychology colleagues at the annual Jean Piaget Society meeting. The talk was on the importance of thinking carefully about the types of books we choose helping young dual-language learners build vocabulary (more to come in our next post on this!), and was a great way to connect with some like-minded researchers from across Europe who think about bilingualism and early child development as much as we do!

But, Dr. Read hasn’t been the only one out and about this summer – while our research and outreach assistant, Maria Munoz-Yepez has spent the summer in Ecuador (check out the blog she’s keeping about her travels), we have had a new student outreach assistant, Ellen, taking over the reigns, and you might have seen her out and about at The Children’s Discovery Museum, at local San Jose Public Libraries, at Hicklebees… she’s been hitting the pavement at all our favorite places to tell families about the work we do, and helping them get involved in language learning with us!

And, lastly we’ve also had a team of new research students this summer through a special grant for summer undergraduate research (SUPRE) from the American Psychological Association. These SUPRE students – Prynce, Jade, Hector and Leya – are SUPER (haha, couldn’t resist),

and they’ve been working full time this summer integrating their training in neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and cultural psychology with our work in child development. They’re learning the ins and outs of study design, eye-tracking, data analysis… and, of course, how to read a good storybook aloud!

We’re looking forward to another month of this here in the lab, and will report on some of our accomplishments and findings soon. As my PhD advisor used to always say.. “Have a productive vacation!” (Just kidding, we’re taking days off to relax as well).