Category Archives: Recent Findings and Presentations

some sciencey news, that parents can… use

Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

This just in! A new academic paper from the Read Lab went to print last week (see here ) in the peer reviewed journal Cognitive Development describing the results of a study we started 3 years ago (yes, some of our research volunteers are already in first grade!). In the paper we describe a phenomenon that many parents and preschool teachers may already be aware of – when you read a child a little rhyme but leave off the last word, kids are pretty good at filling it in for you.

Imagine reading these lines from Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Thinks You Can Think to a 3- or 4-year-old :

“You can think up some colors / That’s what you can do / You can think about yellow / Or think about…”  

Most kids will jump at the chance to shout out BLUE!  even if they can’t tell you why.

In our paper we document this ability of children to use rhyme to make word predictions (even when they don’t know what rhyme actually is), and discuss how important that ability might be for picking up words from storybook reading (since so many stories rhyme).

Who knew vocabulary building could be so interactive and fun 😉   (hee, hee, we did!)

 

You don’t have to be Eric Carle…

Getting Involved, Read Lab, Uncategorized

On Monday, May 7th many people will be celebrating “Very Hungry Caterpillar Day” to commemorate the beloved little book by Eric Carle that just turned 49(!) years old. We, in the Read Lab love this story, too, but not just the version read by the creator himself…

Eric Carle reads “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”

…but also the many renditions parents do as they read this story (sometimes over and over again) with their young children. It’s actually those unique renditions, tailored to the moment and the child who is listening, with all the spin-off conversations and little check-ins that makes shared reading dynamic and fun and nutritious in the ways we love. That’s why even when we have recordings of the author himself, they’re never quite as good as cuddling up with you!

So, to celebrate Very Hungry Caterpillar Day and all the benefits of shared reading here are some real excerpts of parents reading the story transcribed from the The Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development

Mom:  The very hungry caterpillar   Mom:  Okay. In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf.  Mom:  Where’s the egg ?  Child: it’s there.  Mom:  right .  Mom: Where’s the moon?  Mom:      that’s right. okay.  Child:  whoa that’s a big one!  Mom: okay . Mom:  One Sunday morning (.) the warm sun came up and pop (.) out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar. Child:  where is the egg? Mom:  well it popped out of the egg.  Mom: the egg is back here. Mom: right there (.) that was the egg. Child: and it popped out?  Mom: well the caterpillar popped out of the egg (.) and it was a hungry caterpillar. Child: why didn’t he eat the egg Mom:  I don’t know but we’ll turn the page and see if we can find out…

 ……

Mom: …on Monday he ate through one apple but he was still hungry!  Child: Monday, apple, still hungry  Mom: on Tuesday he ate through two pears one two but he was…  Child: still hungry!  Mom: woah!  Mom: on Wednsday he ate through, how many plums?  Child: three plums!  Mom: but he was…  Child: still hungry!  Mom:  oh no!  Mom: that sounds like daddy! Mom:  on Thursday he ate through, what are those?  Child: strawberries!  Mom: how many strawberries?  Child: one two three four!  Mom: very good he ate through four strawberries but he was…   Child: still hungry!  Mom: very good.

 ……

Child:  he was still hungry!  Child: (gasps as the page is turned) he ate some cake and he ate one ice cream.  Child: and he ate one pizza.  Child: and he ate one cheese.  Child: and he ate some…   Mom: one slice of salami.  Child: one slice of salami.  Child: he ate… had a popsicle and he ate some pie.  Child: and he had a hotdog.  Child: and he had some cupcakes.  Child:      and he had some watermelon.  Child: and…   Mom: somebody please rewrite this (laughs)

 ……

Mom:  let’s see what he ate on this page.  Mom: on Saturday he ate through one piece of chocolate cake (.) one ice cream cone (.) one pickle (.) one slice of (.) swiss cheese (.) one slice of salami (.) one lollipop (.) one piece of cherry pie (.) one sausage (.) one cupcake and one…  Child: I love cupcakes.   Mom: you do?   Child: I love cupcakes.  Mom: I know you do.  Mom:      and one slice of watermelon.  Child: I like watermelon too!   Mom: wow he ate so much.  Mom:      that night he had a stomach ache.  Mom: I guess he would . 

……

Mom: …he stayed inside for more than two weeks (.) then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon and pushed his way out and…   Mom: he was a beautiful butterfly.   Child: blue yellow.  Mom:      you gonna tell me all the colors that are on here?   Child: blue red yellow purple yellow (.) red red blue.   Mom: what about this color?   Child: mm green.   Mom: mm maybe.   Child: black. Mom: right.   Mom: was he beautiful?  Mom: hmm…  Child: his head is small.   Mom: yeah his head’s pretty small.

These are the types of extra-textual conversations we love to learn about. If you have a child 5 or under and would like to join us in our storybook reading research projects please let us know at childresearch@scu.edu or sign up here.

 

 

Read Lab Grads – Where are they now?

Read Lab

Wondering what some of our alums are up to these days? So were we, and when we reached out we found out about all the talent and good work that they have been multiplying. Check these awesome readers out –

Jennifer Coleman ‘13

I am currently entering the final year of my clinical PhD program at Palo Alto University and moving from San Francisco to Chicago to do my pre-doctoral internship at Northwestern University. I will be working at the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) department providing therapy to the students. I have been working in college counseling for the past few years and was even a therapist at Santa Clara University CAPS for a year! I cannot wait to be finished with my doctoral program and finally a licensed clinician!

It’s so hard to choose a favorite children’s book there are so many great ones. I think I would have to go with the classic Goodnight Moon because my parents used to read that to me every night.

 

Bianca (Zardetto) Rodriguez ‘15

I am about to graduate with my Master’s in Counseling Psychology from SCU this June!

During my last year in the program, I have been working full-time at my practicum site working with Spanish speaking families in a community-based agency. I have about 15 clients in my caseload right now ranging from 6 to 18 years old. I am also wrapping up a few projects with the Children’s Discovery Museum working on research that is focused on healthy eating and physical activity.

My favorite children’s book would be La Mariposa by our very own Professor Jimenez 🙂

Anisha Agarwal ‘15

I finished up my Master’s in Organizational Psychology from USC last year. Upon graduation, I decided to switch companies (where I used to work with Bianca!) and move to San Francisco. I’m simply living the city life and am currently a tech recruiter at Intercom.

My favorite children’s book has to be The Rainbow Fish — the moral of the story is great.

 

Andrew Weaver ‘15

I have officially committed to NYU to pursue a Ph.D. in Teaching & Learning with a concentration in Literacy Instruction (I could never lose the reading focus after all). I will be working with Michael Kieffer studying the use of Executive Functions in literacy instruction for middle school students, as well as some work on peer networks and academic achievement. I am also going to be a member of the Institute of Educational Sciences Pre-doctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training fellowship (IES-PIRT), which will allow me to work with students from other social sciences looking at education.  I am beyond excited about this program, and to move to NYC!

My favorite kid’s book is The Little Prince!

Maddie Regan ‘15

I’m still working in Ireland with the L’Arche Community, a community centered around adults with intellectual disabilities. I’ve been here since the Fall of 2016. At the end of last year, I switched positions from residential staff to our day program, so I’m working directly with our core members on life skills, reading, independent living, etc. I’ve even done some rhyming exercises and games with some of our verbal core members and it’s been really cool to see the outcomes of their abilities (most all of them can rhyme when prompted!).

 

My next steps are a bit up in the air, as I’d like to make a change career-wise and am choosing between staying in Ireland or a move back to the States. I’m also hoping in a few years time to apply to Masters in Social Work programs, either somewhere in Europe or in the USA. So lots of possibilities, just not sure where in the world just yet!

And only recently I’ve been reading a LOT of Winnie the Pooh to a few of my core members, it’s a very popular series here (even if it doesn’t rhyme much).

Briana Mitchell ‘15

I’ve been working as a research assistant in neonatology at the Stanford School of Medicine since July 2016, but in three weeks I will actually be starting a new job at UCSF.  I’ll be a Senior Clinical Research Coordinator in the OB/GYN department at San Francisco General Hospital, working on clinical trials for new kinds of contraceptives. In the next year or two I’m planning to apply to master’s entry nursing programs to become a nurse practitioner, hopefully in women’s health.

One of my favorite children’s books is Great Day for Up by Dr. Seuss (of course). My mom can still recite most of that book to this day because I made her read it to me so many times, which is where I got the inspiration for the repetition study!

Sarah James ‘15

I am still teaching first grade in Baltimore, MD. I finished my Teach for America commitment and graduated from Johns Hopkins with my Masters in Education and have been enjoying my time teaching in the city. I am planning to stay in teaching for a little while longer.

I am also participating in a policy and advocacy fellowship this coming summer to work for a nonprofit on education reform and learn more about the private, nonprofit sector. I have also been heading up a Green Team at my current elementary school and really enjoying teaching the students about environmental issues and the importance of recycling.

We just read Are You My Mother? in my first-grade class so I think that is my current favorite children’s book!

Rose Dhaliwal ‘15

I am currently working as a Public Relations & Policy Advisor for a City of San Jose Councilmember (which I have been doing since graduation). I’m thrilled that I will be starting my PsyD in Clinical Psychology at the University of La Verne this fall. My work will focus on mental health awareness & education in adolescents in the juvenile justice system. I’m very excited about this new chapter in my life and using all that I have learned in your lab throughout my future career!

My favorite children’s book is The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. It doesn’t rhyme but I love its focus on appreciating diversity among us all 🙂

Katie Ciffone ‘15

I graduated with my masters and teaching credential from SCU last June. I am currently working as a 3rd grade teacher at a title one (low income) school in San Jose. Some of my students have suffered from trauma that impacts their social interactions and attitudes toward education. I’m learning to target specific behaviors by using positive reinforcement strategies, and these methods have changed how I view challenging physical behaviors and have helped me meet the social-emotional needs of my students.  At the beginning of the year, I had students reading from a pre-kindergarten level to a beginning of sixth grade level. They have all made progress and I am very proud to be their teacher.

This summer I will teach dance and art to elementary and middle school students. I will also transition to a new school district and attend different professional development opportunities to help me prepare for my future students. I am still planning to pursue a special education credential to help me better meet the needs of diverse students. My favorite children’s book is Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. I distinctly remember my teacher reading this book in elementary school and it forever touched my heart.

Erin Furay ‘16

I am about to finish up my 2nd year of graduate school studying for my PhD in Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University (in the same program as Jennifer!). This morning, I just matched at a practicum training site for next year; I will be at Kaiser Permanente Richmond’s Child & Family Team, providing individual therapy to kids and teens as well as couples and family therapy. I will also get to conduct and observe intakes, run group therapy sessions, and also do some assessment of kids and teens. I can’t wait to start this summer!

Lastly, and most importantly, Iggy Peck, Architect is my favorite children’s book (and/or Rosie Revere, Engineer). They are the best (and they rhyme!).

Tess Miller ‘16

During the day, I am currently a behavior specialist at a therapeutic school for emotionally disturbed kids. Basically, I manage 11 ED kids – from emotional needs to behavioral needs. I was just promoted to manage the schools’ social skills curriculum as well (and yes I used what I learned from my autism social stories books!!!).

At night I am getting my Masters in Clinical Psychology, and a joint LPCC/MFT license. I will start practicum in one year! Woohoo! I am really hoping to work in the Juvenile/CPS system for that. This summer, I am also starting work towards my BCBA (board certified behavior analysis).

My favorite kid’s book is definitely The Seven Silly Eaters. My mother read that to me constantly.

Marya Husary ‘17

Since graduation last year, I worked in the Language and Cognitive Development lab at UC Berkeley over the summer. I worked with a PhD student from Yale University studying the impact socioeconomic status had on children’s risk taking. I worked on collecting lit reviews, project design, and pilot testing of the study. I traveled to Jordan and Georgia (the country in Eastern Europe) for about a month, and then in November I started working as a project specialist at the Tuberculosis Control Branch at the CA Department of Public Health. I’m working closely with clinicians and epidemiologist on their work to control, monitor, reduce and eliminate TB. Quite different from anything I’ve worked in before but I’ve learned a lot and excited to be working on my own project soon.

I took the GRE last month and have been looking into various Masters in Public Health programs. I’m taking my time a little more than I initially planned because I really want to find the best field incorporating psychology and public health. I’ve worked in each field alone and something always seems to be missing.

My favorite childhood book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. A short story but I used to love the rhymes.

Jacqueline Quirke ‘17

Since graduating, I have been working in the Language and Cognition lab at Stanford running various studies at the Children’s Discovery Museum in downtown San Jose. I just took the GRE a week ago and am now starting to refine my search on grad school programs! Like Marya, I am trying to take the process slow in order to make sure I pick the right program, but as of now I am going to apply to both MFT and clinical doctorate programs either this fall or next!

There are two children’s books that I really like and I can’t seem to choose which is my favorite! They are “The Dot” and “Beautiful Oops” both about art 🙂

 

 

It’s not just esto o aquello…

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

Recently the Read lab conducted a preliminary survey of local parents who are raising young English and Spanish learners to find out more about the choices parents make when sharing books with their young dual-language learners that support both languages. We discovered that categorizing children’s home language and shared reading experiences is not an “either/or” (or “esto/aquello”) dichotomy, and that locally there are many different flavors of what it means to be a bilingual family!

how would *you* read these to your child?

Parents of varying proficiency themselves in each language helped us with the survey. And, while there were no overall differences in the amount of shared reading parents do with their children based on their primary language at home, and no differences in the variety of regular readers or the likelihood that it is usually mom who is the primary reader (go madres!). Parents in primarily English speaking or primarily Spanish speaking homes reported reading with their kids much more frequently in their own more proficient language. However (this is the fun part), parents who identified their household as equally bilingual reported reading in their less proficient language more often than the other two groups, often commenting that they did so in an effort to bolster their child’s dual-language learning, even if it meant challenging themselves or making mistakes in front of their child. Also, we found that in each group, parents’ attitudes and rules about language mixing also ranged from a strict policy of non-mixing (e.g., “we only Speak Spanish at home, no English allowed!”) to frequent and enthusiastic translating between Spanish and English.

The results from our survey so far are already interesting, as they spark new questions about how cross-language shared reading and mixing and translating may all be influencing what young children learn from stories in dual-language learning homes!

We will be presenting some of these findings at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in San Francisco in May, and also at the Jean Piaget Society Meeting in Amsterdam in June – so stay tuned for what our academic colleagues think of this work 🙂

But in the meantime, the survey responses we have collected are also helping us with the Spanish/English storybooks study we are just getting started here at home in San Jose. Knowing more about the language practices and preferences of parents who read with their preschool-aged dual-language learners will help us find the right books for the right kinds of learners in our local community.

If *you* are raising a dual-language learner (of any language pair, not just Spanish and English) what do you think? How do you use storybooks to support either or both of your child’s languages? Do you have strategies that involve translating, mixing, or immersion? Let us know! And also, if you’d like to participate in the Spanish/English storybooks study, send us an email and we’ll tell you more about it: childresearch@scu.edu

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.

And they’re off…

Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

November is always a busy month, but one happy task now complete was sending off this year’s batch of Letters of Recommendation. Two former Read Lab students, Rosaleen Dhaliwal (’15) and Andrew Weaver (’15) are applying to some top graduate programs in Psychology and Education, and we are sending them our collective well-wishes for a satisfying return on those applications. Both of them will carry on building from their experiences working with young  children in the Read Lab (see Andrew’s recently published, co-authored work on children’s language play here) and the work they have been doing out in the world since graduating. We look forward to hearing where they will end up, and how they will be making the world a better place next fall!

How are kids learning new words from storybooks?

Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

What does it mean to really know a word? Well, the Read Lab just like other language learning researchers around the world grapple with that question all the time. We’ve seen over and over again in our research that kids can “pick up” new words like chimpanzee, or smooze, or even applaud just from encountering them in helpful places within a storybook. (for example). But, usually what we find is that kids who are just beginning to know these words are much better at finding pictures of them (e.g., I say “where’s the smooze?” and the 3-year-old picks the right monster out of a lineup) than they are at coming up with the words themselves (e.g., I point to the picture of the smooze and say “what’s that?” and the 3-year-old says “a monster” instead of “snooze”).

This is so common in language learning studies – that comprehension is easier than production –  that we often don’t pay much attention to it. And, so at first, in our recent study on learning challenging verbs from a treasure hunt storybook, again, we weren’t surprised to find that 3 and 4-year-olds were better at pointing to pictures of a little girl casting her flashlight into a cave, or demolishing part of a wall to find a treasure, or applauding for herself when she had succeeded  – we were just excited that children had picked up on these hard words in the first place! (see picture of how excited we were below).

But, this week, when we took a look at all the things that children said when we pointed to the pictures and asked them, “what is she doing here?” we noticed that while not many kids answered “oh, Dr. Read it is clear that she is casting” (a couple kinda did though), all the “wrong” answers they gave us were telling us something, too. Kids weren’t just saying “I don’t know” or “She’s doing something,” they were trying to find words that they already know well and connect these new words to them.

It’s an important step in language learning, and so common it gets overlooked – kids use what words they already know to create connections to new words, so that when those knew words are known they won’t be floating around in space, or trapped within a single treasure hunt storybook, they’ll be well integrated in the child’s own mind. So, children might know a little bit more about demolishing, even before they use that word themselves – but watch out, because eventually that word will become their own!

Post-CDS post

Read Lab, Recent Findings and Presentations

So much for updates throughout the weekend 🙂  Instead, we’re back, it’s Monday and we’re excited to report that our own research presentations (one on bilingual storybooks that work well for dual-language learners, and another on how to use rhyme in storybooks to help kids learn challenging verbs) were both well received and connected to some of the many, many other talks that we heard from other researchers around the country.

Jaqueline and Dr. Read excited about kids learning verbs from storybooks

Lots of follow-up emails to send! The most important thing we learned? The world of research on children’s cognitive development – and especially how to support it, is full of talented scientists and people who care deeply about kids. We’re looking forward to the projects that this conference has sparked, sharing more of what we learned, and strengthening our collaborations! Next stop, APS.