Category Archives: Current and Ongoing Studies

Rhyming in the new year

Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations
Rose reading one of the lab’s favorite rhyming books – Room on a Broom by Julia Donaldson

The Read lab is starting 2018 with rhyme on our minds! For the last few years we have been investigating how rhyming target words in stories, can help kids remember and learn those words better (see here) so this isn’t entirely new. Last year we also saw that kids could use rhyme to make their own predictions about what words to expect in a story, and we found that rhyme could help with even challenging verbs, too (two new papers forthcoming in 2018!). Now, the monster story is back in action and we’re diving deeper into how both rhyme *and* giving kids a chance to make predictions can help make new words extra sticky. Over the break 24 fun-loving 2- to 5-year-olds lent us their time and their listening ears to help us learn the monsters’ names in this new study, but we are still hoping another 25 will join us in the lab to get to the bottom of just how best we can take advantage of good rhymy stories to help expand our vocabularies. If you’d like to help out or learn more, let us know by emailing childresearch@scu.edu

“No! cried the witch, flying higher and higher. The dragon flew after her, breathing out… – Rose jumps in – FIRE!” That word will surely stick with her!

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

Bhagwat Lab, Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Read Lab, Whitfield Lab

Not so fast! Just because the students are finishing up Week 10 today, doesn’t mean that our research is grinding to a halt for the year. Here’s a reminder of the ongoing studies happening in our research group – let us know if you want to get involved!

Ongoing Studies

Bilingual Study Survey (Read Lab)
Are you a parent of a child under the age of six whois learning English or Spanish? Would you like to participate in a short 25-minute survey to help us learn more about the benefits of storybook reading? If yes, please click the link in the language you would like to answer the survey.
Spanish Survey:
https://scu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0ebHsf9Wk0xppg9
English Survey:
https://scu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4Vj1mYnh1DFAQD3

Nature Study (Whitfield Lab)
Is your child between the ages of 8 and 10? Would you be interested in having your children participate in a study of the impact of nature on attention, or want more information about the study? If yes, please contact us at childresearch@scu.edu.

Dramatic Pause Study (Read Lab)
“One fish, two fish, red fish…?” Ever notice how when you read with your child you can sometimes pause and let them fill in the last words? Well, the Read Lab is investigating this phenomenon and how it can actually help kids learn new words from storybooks. Two experiments will continue into the new year on this theme, let us know if you have a 2- to 5-year-old and would like to participate at childresearch@scu.edu.

Beliefs About Language Study (Bhagwat Lab)
Where does language come from? Do preschool children know that language is something we learn from our parents or do they believe that the language that we speak is something that we are born with? In the Bhagwat lab, we are currently exploring this question with both monolingual and bilingual children, here in the US and also in India. If your child is between 4 and 6 years, and you would like to participate in this study, email us at childresearch@scu.edu.

Do short breaks help loooong attention in kids?

Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Whitfield Lab

Not everything we do around here is with preschoolers! The Whitfield Lab is currently looking for 8- to 10-year-olds for studies this fall  investigating how taking a short break in the middle of a computer lesson helps children to continue paying attention until the end of the task. What kind of break? How much could it help? Answers coming soon…

If you are interested in participating, contact us at childresearch@scu.edu  In the study, children will play some short memory games and a simple but challenging computer game over three-sessions – what they would often be doing at home anyway, but here we’ll turn it into science 🙂

Getting ready for a new school year!

Bhagwat Lab, Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Read Lab, Whitfield Lab

While many of our students here at SCU haven’t returned to campus yet, the developmental labs are already hard at work making plans for fall research! We’re starting with some new outreach initiatives led by our new Research and Outreach Assistant, Maria Munoz Yepez (yay!). We’re currently working with partners at local preschools and elementary schools and San Jose public libraries to set up studies and get in touch with families interested in being a part of child development research. We are also looking for ideas for ways that we can give back to our parents and partners. If you’d like to get more involved in our research let us know! You can join our volunteer pool here: https://goo.gl/forms/nBdRIqNU0NnX8Rur2  or  if you are already in our volunteer pool but have some ideas for helping us stay better connected with you, you can  fill out a quick survey here: https://goo.gl/forms/Zoyha2uSKn9537iX2

Happy back-to-school!

End of year conference round-up!

Bhagwat Lab, Current and Ongoing Studies, Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

Research students from all our labs have spent much of the Spring presenting new findings around the Bay Area. Highlights include Jessica’s presentation of some of the Read Lab’s new work on bilingual storybooks at SPARC (at San Jose State) and at the annual WPA (Western Psychological Association) meeting in Sacramento.

Jessica at WPA

Jaqueline presented her recent findings on how to support verb learning with storybooks at SPARC, and Berkeley’s California Cognitive Science conference, and at our own Sigma Xi conference at Santa Clara.

Megan and Jacqueline at Berkeley

And, Shreya presented some recent findings from the Bhagwat lab on bilingual children’s beliefs about where language comes from at both SPARC and the Berkeley Cognitive Science conference.

Angela and Shreya with Dr. Bhagwat at SPARC

Congratulations to all our senior researchers! We’re so proud.

new storybook sharing survey for parents with children on the spectrum

Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Read Lab

The Read Lab’s team of students working on questions of how shared reading can specifically benefit children with ASD are looking to families to give them insight on shared reading in the home. They have finished developing a short survey for parents with children on the autism spectrum that can be found here:

shared reading survey

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested in sharing their experiences reading with a child with autism (it only takes 20 minutes)!

Kids and Tech Conference

Current and Ongoing Studies, Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

Members of the Read Lab just returned from this weekend’s Society for Research in Child Development’s special topic meeting on Technology and Media in Child Development at UC Irvine. We are full of new ideas and information about all the ways kids can (and can’t) use technologies to aid language learning!

Here we are with our lovely poster highlighting some of the newest findings in our study of how best to read e-books with young language learners on the autism spectrum:

Dr. Read and alumna, Erin Furay presenting our work on reading e-books with children on the autism spectrum.
Dr. Read and alumna, Erin Furay presenting our work on reading e-books with children on the autism spectrum.

 

back to school!

Current and Ongoing Studies, Read Lab

After a little summer break, the new SCU school year has begun, and the Read lab is excited to welcome some new research students!

Our lab meetings kicked off today, and new projects are already seeding. This year along with our continuing work on storybooks for dual language learners (new student captain: Jessica Jara), and our expanding work on e-books for children on the autism spectrum (new student captain: Marya Husary), we’re developing a new study on how children can learn new verbs from a rhyming treasure hunt story (captain: Jacqueline Quirk)! There will be more to come soon, but even now we can see that this year’s read lab ship is in good hands – aye, aye!

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Four of our seven new 2016/17 read lab members, from left to right: Marissa, Jacqueline, Megan and Marya. 

 

new story book study launched for dual-language learners

Current and Ongoing Studies, Getting Involved, Read Lab

After many months preparing, the Read Lab has just launched the second half of our story book project for dual-language learners! Last year, with the imaginative, hard-working and phenomenal alumnae Bianca Zardetto and Anisha Agarwal, we finished a version of this study that looked at how beginner Spanish learners pick up new vocabulary differently from books written all in Spanish vs. code-switching books that just pepper in the Spanish words. We won’t give away the findings here just yet, but they were pretty remarkable 😉

Now we’re finally ready with four new books  to test beginner English learners in the same way. With our newest student researcher, Jessica Jara, doing both the outreach and reading, the study launched today at Hillview Library in San Jose.

In a few weeks we should have some findings that we can share, so stay tuned. And, in the meantime if you have or know a 2- to 5-year-old Spanish speaker who would like to hear a couple new animal stories, let us know!

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Anisha and Bianca reading at the 2015 Ed Fair