Dr. Maria Arredondo
We are delighted to announce that our postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Maria Arredondo, has been awarded a two-year research fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Maria is also a Killam Fellow, having recently won the highly-competitive Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from UBC. We couldn’t be more proud and are so glad to have her on our team!
Maria joined our Centre in July 2017, upon completion of her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on understanding how bilingual children acquire their languages; the cognitive and neural networks that allow children to successfully acquire multiple languages and become fluent; and how children come to learn and understand from their culture(s). Maria’s interest in childhood bilingualism stems from her own experiences – she was born in a small town in Argentina and moved to Houston, Texas with her family when she was 12; she is now fluent in both Spanish and English. Here at the Infant Studies Centre, Maria uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate how bilingual infants’ tracking of two languages impacts attention and language outcomes. Maria is currently looking for families with infants ages 5-6 months and 9-10 months from various language backgrounds to participate in her study; interested families can sign-up here (we are part of the UBC Early Development Research Group).
You can learn more about Maria and her exciting research on her website.