happy holidays from the littlest readers!
Kids and Tech Conference
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:
back to school!
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!
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!
e-books for kids on the autism spectrum are going to SRCD
Two student researchers from the Read Lab and recent graduates (congrats!!), Tess Miller and Erin Furay have just been accepted to present their initial findings from our study of e-book reading with young children on the autism spectrum at the nationally recognized Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2016 Special Topics Meeting on Technology and Media in Children’s Development in October (whew, that’s a mouthful). This comes after a busy spring quarter in which Tess, Erin and their co-investigator, graduate student in the SCU school of Education, Katie Ciffone, also presented the work at San Jose State’s 2016 Spartan Psychological Association Research Conference (SPARC), at the annual conference of the Western Psychological Association (WPA), and at Santa Clara’s own First Annual Compassion in Action for Children Research Conference. They have spent the last two months gathering so much great feedback from other researchers, therapists and parents on this inspiring work.
The team recently wrapped up the first version of the study, which looks at the differences between how children with autism respond to and remember specially designed stories read to them on e-books either with or without the scaffolding of a therapist. With the amazing volunteer help of 10 local families with children on the spectrum, this one-of-a-kind study has already given us some promising insights into the role that both the therapist and an e-reader can play in helping children learn from stories.
We are so proud of this work and how it highlights the abilities of even very young children on the spectrum working against big challenges in their language development. We are also super proud of Tess, Erin and Katie for all the months of hard work and love they have poured (and are still pouring) into this project.
And now… while preparing for the SRCD conference, we are also busy expanding our repertoire of books and planning a follow up study for the fall. Book topic suggestions, ideas and questions welcome! Stay tuned…
Hello world!
This is our new site bringing together information on child development research in the psychology department at Santa Clara University. This page features cognitive development research that is recent and ongoing, and information about how to get involved. Stay tuned!