For Students:
The Project on Children’s Language Learning is a part of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory within the Department of Linguistics. The project includes an infant component (0-3 years old) and a preschool component (3-5 years old). Research positions are currently available working in the Infant Lab.
Students registered for independent study credit (Ling 499) will receive
3 credits for their work on the project and are expected to work 10-12 hours
per week. Students working in the lab are asked for a 2 semester minimum committment.
See 499Syllabus.pdf.
The longer a research assistant works in the lab, the more responsibilities
they are given. Some students may work closely with graduate students in designing
and implementing new research projects. Research projects conducted in the
lab may, in some cases, be extended to become honors theses.
The Infant Lab
Research with infants aims to understand linguistic knowledge in children
who are not yet able to speak or who are just beginning to speak. The research
is typically conducted on campus in our infant language research lab in Taliaferro
Hall. Much of this research involves measuring infants’ eye-movements
when they are exposed to various audio-visual stimuli. These methods place
minimal demands on the children and enable us to investigate children’s
comprehension of language even before they are able to talk. For example,
we might show them a video of two objects (say, a dog and a car) with an audio
track of “find the car” and measure whether they look more at
the matching or mismatching video. Or, we might play audio files of artificial
speech with certain properties and measure how long they listen to these files.
Please visit our the methods page of this web site for brief descriptions
of the procedures used.
The responsibilities of research assistants in the Infant Lab include:
recruiting
Research assistants play a large role in contacting parents whose children are in our database and inviting them into the lab to participate in our studies.
performing measurements
Research assistants also record many of the behavioral measurements that we collect. For example, in studies in which we measure infants’ visual attention to a stimulus, research assistants measure visual attention at a sampling rate of 30 measurements per second.
creating materials
Because most of our materials involve audio-visual presentation, research assistants will learn to use advanced video and audio editing software to create materials.
conducting experiments
Research assistants may also participate in conducting experiments. This involves direct interaction with the infants and parents in addition to using our audio-visual experiment presentation system.
Research with Preschoolers
Research with preschoolers may involve more direct contact with children than research in the infant lab. This research is carried out in several area preschools, including the University of Maryland’s Center for Young Children, and in our laboratory in Marie Mount Hall. Our research examines preschoolers’ knowledge of syntax and semantics through a variety of interactive games designed to elicit verbal responses from young children. Please visit the methods page of this web site for a brief description of the Truth value Judgement Task, including some video examples. Additionally, some studies involve using an automated eye-tracking system, which identifies what someone is looking at in real time while listening to sentences in a real-world setting.
Responsibilities of researchers working with preschoolers include:
designing materials
Most of these studies involve the creation of stories that we tell the children. Because preschoolers have a limited attention span and are limited in their ability to integrate knowledge about the world with their linguistic representations, designing materials for our studies requires careful control of factors that help to maintain children’s interest and to focus on the linguistically relevant aspects of the stories. Creativity is a must for these positions!
performing studies
Experimenters interact with the children, telling the stories and controling a puppet. Some research assistants may also be involved in eye-tracking studies that involve less direct contact with children.
If you are interested in participating in lab research please contact the lab manager, Rebecca Baier, at rbaier@umd.edu.