Supervising Faculty: Scott Fraundorf
Contact: sfraundo@pitt.edu
Area of Research: Cognitive
Description of Research: Even when people speak the same language, we often have different accents or dialects. For example, a person from Pittsburgh might say "Yinz better wait before going dahntahn; those potholes on Bigelow need filled in first." If you aren't from Pittsburgh, this sentence might be a bit more difficult to understand. But in general, our mind is still quite good at figuring out the meaning behind such sentences, even if the speech sounds or grammar are unfamiliar to us.
We’re conducting research to understand how people process accent- and dialect-related variability in speech to understand when people do and don't succeed in navigating a world of language variability.
Duties of Students:
- Assist in experimental stimuli creation (such as helping to find facts or prose passages)
- Help collect data (e.g. running participants through experiments)
- Code and/or analyze data from studies
- Help pilot experiments to look for errors and provide feedback
- Read scientific papers from this area of research and discuss them in lab meetings.
Requirements:
- Overall GPA of 3.0 or higher
- 12 credits of Psychology (including current term)
- STAT 0200/1000/1100 Statistics
- PSY 0036 Research Methods Lecture
- PSY 0037 Research Methods Lab
Apply here: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9SwQCVjhpyooXZA
Number of Students: 2
Terms offered: Fall and Spring
Lab page: http://www.maple-lab.org