TALKIN' - University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Accelerated learning
When toddlers go to college, researchers go to head of the class
The research subjects are young
— children ages 2 to 4 — and the
researchers are youthful, too.
As early as their sophomore years
at UW-Green Bay, undergraduates
are contributing to high-level
studies of cognitive development
and language acquisition in children.
“We’re pushing our students to
get involved in research as early as
possible,” says Prof. Jennifer Zapf.
Zapf directs the University’s Language
Learning Lab. Over the
course of the spring semester she
and four assistants worked with
more than 75 young children –
coordinating the short visits with
parent volunteers and local childcare
centers – to observe toddlers
at play and performing simple
tasks. The results inform various
studies and also enrich a general
database related to skill and language
development.
Zapf’s academic unit, Human
Development, has revamped its
curriculum to encourage new
students to take a building-block
research course early in their
college careers. Human Development
and Psychology are among
the University’s most heavily
enrolled majors, and Zapf draws
from among these and others in
recruiting research assistants.
“Making a research-methods
course a prerequisite has been
beneficial,” Zapf says. “Our students
get so much more out of their
upper-level classes. In my case,
when they come into my 400-level
Cognitive Psychology class where
it’s a very heavy research focus,
they have a solid background.”
Faculty members believe students
will have better opportunities to
develop their skills and build a
portfolio. Instead of waiting until
their senior year and perhaps a
single project with one professor,
motivated individuals can participate
in several research studies
and, as Zapf says, “they’ll have varied
experiences with three different
faculty members and subjects,
and get three letters of recommendation,
instead of just one.”
At the Language Lab, the newest
study involves the question
of whether seemingly small differences
in word structure or
complexity can affect a toddler’s
ability to remember not only the
word itself but also the associated
object or picture.
For example, Zapf explains, the
word “dogs” requires more effort
to pronounce, because of its backto-back
consonant sounds, than
the equally short
word “keys.” The
study is ongoing, but
early results point
to a correlation
between struggling
to pronounce a new
plural and remembering
the concept,
words or meaning.
Student Craig Van
Pay presented the
preliminary findings
at the annual
student research
fair at UW-Green
Bay. His professor
suggests the
project could be
the topic of a major
academic paper
within a year.
“For a student to be
listed as the co-author of a paper,
as an undergraduate, is something
special,” says Zapf, who notes
that a third co-author is a highly
respected professor at Northwestern
University collaborating on
the same project.
A number of major universities
have language learning labs, Zapf
“I’d say we’re
relatively unique
for a campus
this size.”
–Prof. Zapf
says, among them the University
of Illinois and Indiana University,
where she did her
own undergraduate
and graduate work.
Some small- to midsize
institutions
also have speech
therapy programs
which tend to
focus on delayed
or impaired speech
development.
The program at
UW-Green Bay, she
believes, is different
because of the
school’s size and
the lab’s emphasis
on core research
involving typical
language formation
in small children.
“I’d say we’re relatively
unique for a
campus this size,” she says. “Also,
what’s cool for our students is
they’re not just feeding numbers
into the computer, or doing
paperwork. They’re working with
children, connecting with the
parents and child-care providers,
and learning five different experimental
procedures, all at once.”
For language researchers,
video was baby blockbuster
It was an internet and morning news sensation: Sam and Ren babbling away,
captured on Mom’s camcorder as they gestured, laughed and conversed in a
secret baby language.
The video of the 17-month-old twins and their irresistibly adorable exchange
left most viewers smiling. At UW-Green Bay, where students assist on speechacquisition
studies with toddlers roughly the same age, there were smiles of
recognition, too.
“The basic things we’re seeing in that video, much of it is familiar to our
students,” says Human Development Prof. Jennifer Zapf. “It does show that
human communication is not just about words but how we say them.”
Not only were Zapf’s students excited by the clip — it demonstrated the
currency and public fascination with this type of research — the larger
academic world was chattering, too. On the day the video went viral, Zapf
was at her field’s major annual conference, the Society for Research in Child
Development. “Everybody was talking about it. Whether it could be classified
as ‘language’ was the great debate.”
May 2011
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