In early February 2017, a group of our Research Assistants presented their projects at the first annual Language Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference (LSURC), and we couldn’t be more proud!
Research Assitants (from left to right) Tanya Sharma, Kunashni Parikh, Lal Koyuncu, Ariel Ko, Cassie Tam, Mikayla Blumenthal and Kristina Chang with Dr. Janet Werker (Director) and Sav Nijeboer (Research Manager).
Ariel Ko explains the results of her project on the effects of English exposure and language mixing on bilingual (Cantonese-English or Mandarin-English) toddlers’ lexical-semantic networks (as her project partner Kristina Chang watches on, left).
Mikayla Blumenthal speaks to LSURC attendees about her project on auditory-motor interactions in the speech perception of preverbal infants (6 months old). Mikayla won an award for Best Poster Presentation!
Tanya Sharma and Kunashni Parikh presented orally at LSURC about their investigation of audiovisual influences on infant speech perception. They are currently running a study at our Centre with 6-, 9-, and 11-month-old infants who are hearing a South Asian language at home (for example, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati).
Lal Koyuncu speaks about the interesting method she uses (high-amplitude sucking procedure) at BC Women’s Hospital to investigate newborn infants’ ability to track frequency information present in language.