Category Archives: Getting Involved

Do short breaks help loooong attention in kids?

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!

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!

new storybook sharing survey for parents with children on the spectrum

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)!

new story book study launched for dual-language learners

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