Congratulations Read Lab students on a GREAT year of learning, training, research and outreach. Students in the Read Lab nailed it this year, designing and proposing four major studies (more to come on each), getting out into the community to tell parents about our work and recruit kid scientist volunteers, collecting data, analyzing data, presenting data, writing about data, and winning awards.
Special Congrats to our Seniors, going on to do even more good work in the world. We are SO SO #SCUPROUD of you!
In 2017, Read Lab alumna Christy Pavlov (nee McCullom) wanted to know more about the benefits of reading aloud with young children, but not the benefits to the children, themselves (we know there’s LOTS of those!) but more the benefits to the adult reader.
Christy presenting this work at the Sigma Xi Honors Society poster session at SCU in 2018
Does reading a book with a young child make an adult feel happy? Does it give them a sense of connection? Is there something special about reading, above and beyond just being together with a child that can have some positive emotional benefit for the reader?
Well, it turns out, yes.
After three years and the teamwork of five other research students in the Read Lab, including recent graduate Sara Rabinowitz who worked through the pandemic on analyzing data and writing about this work, a new paper is out that describes and documents the real mood boosts that volunteer readers experience when they read aloud with preschool-aged children.
Sara Rabinowitz graduating last year after taking lead authorship on this work
The best part, is this new study is open-access, so you can read about all the details here.
In fact, maybe you should read this paper aloud, with a child, and see how you feel after 🙂
In all of our research with young children, we reveal over and over again the importance of positive interaction and sharing stories with young children. Our labs, and our student readers, in particular, were so excited last week to share in this with some of our most favorite community friends, partners and volunteers. Hosting the mini-marathon story time was a way for us to to just connect and share back what we are learning about everyday – that words and ideas and books help us all grow! Special thanks go out to Every Child a Reader, the sponsor organization, to our own SCU Library for helping us host, and for all the wide-eyed and well-behaved attendees that made sharing stories so fun. Let’s do it again next year!
With the sponsorship of the SCU library, we have been able join national Children’s Book Week and will be hosting a mini-marathon story time event. Stop by anytime to listen to SCU students read aloud some beloved children’s books. Feel free to share the flyer with friends!
What has the Read Lab been up to this summer, you ask?
So. Much. Fun. Research.
I spy a sloth hanging out in Amsterdam
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!
Ellen thinking about all her favorite children’s books.
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),
The SUPRE students go into the field at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose
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!
Prynce giving a SUPER reading of The Hungry Thing to an attentive audience at Kids on Campus
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).
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…
…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!
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 .Â
……
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.
