Current Research Studies and Funding Sources
Autobiographical memory development
There are two projects we are working on that look at autobiographical memory:
For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicholadis [email protected]
- One project looks at how children 4 -5 years of age come to learn to tell the story of their life. We want to see how children filter out external sources of their memories (such as parents or siblings who have told them their version of a memory), and how they begin to tell their own account of their life. Previous work has already shown that 5 year olds care beginning to filter out their parent's story.
- In this project we are interested in how children tell a story about their life, specifically, what they include as important events. For example, we want to look at the difference between important events such as a death, birth, start of school, etc. vs. including a statement such as "my favourite shoes are red" in their autobiographical story.
For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicholadis [email protected]
Bilinguals’ communication style
We are interested in how French-English and Farsi-English bilingual adults communicate in both of their languages. We ask participants to watch a cartoon and talk about it, tell us about their language-learning history, and describe a picture showing some objects. They do this once in English and once in French/Farsi. An honorarium is offered for participants. Students interested in this study will be looking at how gestures correlate to language skills. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Cognitive predictors of language development
We are interested in how both bilingual and monolingual children’s cognitive abilities (spatial, attentional, memory, etc.) relate to their ability to use and understand language. We ask children between 4 and 6 years of age to do a variety of tasks, including short-term memory, vocabulary test, telling a story, etc. Typically, we require at least two sessions with the children because there are a lot of tasks to do. We are specifically looking for Mandarin-English bilingual and French-English bilingual children. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Language acquisition in bilinguals
This study aims to evaluate if some people are better at learning languages than others. If there is a difference, we want to understand why this might be the case. We will be looking at their motor memory, verbal memory, and other measures to determine if there are any cognitive and motivational predictors of second language acquisition. This study will be testing university students in introductory language courses in Spanish and French, in multiple stages. An honorarium will be offered. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Number Gestures
Our previous research has shown that French-English and German-English bilingual children are better at interpreting number gestures relative to English monolingual children. In the present study, we test whether the same is true of Chinese-English bilingual children and monolingual children. To assess this, we have boxes of toys (like legos, erasers) and put out varying amounts and ask children to tell us how many there are and how many toys correspond to number gestures (like an index finger and a middle finger held up for "two"). For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Gender Attribution
There is evidence to suggest that language affects how we think. For example, previous research suggests that people who speak French and Italian, languages with grammatical genders might come to associate nouns with natural gender. We will have participants to complete a name attribution, voice attribution and semantic differential task. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Music Metaphors
This study is particularly interested in how people learn novel associations between tones and pictures. We will be looking at their ability to match tones, their cognitive flexibility, grammar and gestures. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Storytelling Development
This study will look at how children tell stories. We will have children watch a cartoon video, and then have them explain what happened in the video in one of two ways: (1) Tell the story in the most accurate way (2) Tell the story in the most interesting way. We want to see how differently the same child will tell the story by looking at content and gestures in each situation. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].
Informal Learning in Children's Museums
We are interested in how children learn within informal settings, such as museums that are specifically aimed at children (eg. Telus World of Science). This study will have students create a pop-up museum to premiere in Winter 2018 semester. In addition to running museums we plan on studying the influence of parental knowledge on collaboration between parents and children in a museum. For further information on this study, please contact Elena Nicoladis at [email protected].