Decoding sounds and words in the developing brain In this study, we are using EEG to track how kids’ brains encode sounds that have meaning (familiar words) vs sounds that don’t have any meaning (new words, like ‘fabu’). Kids put on our stretchy EEG cap, and then watch short, silent cartoons while listening to recordings of words and non-words. We hope that this work will help us track how learning happens in young children, and ultimately help us develop better tools for detecting language learning difficulties.
If you have a child between the ages of 2-3 and are interested in participating, please sign up here, or email us at langdev@audiospeech.ubc.ca!
Stories and Screens: In this study we are interested in how reading and vocabulary are impacted by digital reading experiences vs print reading experiences. Parents and children read two stories together, one from a print book, and one from a digital reader. After each story, kids complete a short game that asks them about some of the vocabulary they experienced in the story. We record parent-child reading and interactions, and use an eyetracker to measure your child’s responses during the game.
If you have a child between the ages of 2-3 and are interested in participating, please sign up here, or email us at langdev@audiospeech.ubc.ca!
Previous Studies
Which one sounds like a word? In this study, we asked whether the ability to find new words in continuous streams of speech changed as children got older. We found that children’s performance did in fact change as they got older; however, we also found that this change may have been more about their different strategies in the experiment than they were about the learning itself. Manuscript in preparation.
Language and Development Lab 