Research goals:

Our lab focuses on four factors of the learning environment:

• Context (word mappings, social cues, natural play scenes)
• Language structure (English? Spanish? Korean? Japanese?)
• Cognitive environment (monolingual or bilingual)
• Physical experience (does "giving" feel different than "receiving"?)

We seek to understand how these factors influence the process of language learning—how children's continuous interaction with the world helps them to learn language. Developmental changes are imperative for children to succeed at such seemingly complex tasks as language learning. We strive to recognize when these changes occur, and exactly which cognitive factors are affected as a result.

Lab goals

The main goal of our lab is to create and maintain a fun and stimulating intellectual community that produces a continuous flow of exciting presentations and papers.

For Prospective Graduate Students

For prospective developmental psychology Graduate students and/or for more information about the graduate program, please refer to the Developmental Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience applications page.

For Prospective Undergraduate Research Assistants

Undergraduate students can earn research credit in Psychology by working in a research laboratory. It is a great opportunity to gain valuable research experience and to work closely with a faculty mentor. Hours are flexible, but students must be available 10-15 hours per week.

Opportunities include:

o        Lab meetings for research development and presentation

o        Student workshops for professional development

o        Senior honors thesis, independent research, and class credit

o        Conference presentations (posters and talks)

o        Previous students have received Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and Provost's Undergraduate Research Scholarship Program (PURS)

o        Resume and CV development

Responsibilities include:

o        10-15 hours in lab/week

o        Scheduling and running participants

o        Coding and analyzing data

o        Organizing and running recruitment events

o        Reading and discussing scientific articles

o        Enthusiasm for research in child development!

Click Here to apply or email us at cogdev@central.uh.edu. If you come across questions you cannot answer on the application (already graduated, do not have a GPA yet, etc.) please put NA.