At the conclusion of my Sophomore year, I declared my major in Psychology. After having explored what felt like dozens of majors, I had finally found one that I was excited about. Moreover, I knew that it was time to begin thinking about how I would fulfill my honors college requirement of a senior thesis. In the fall of my Junior year, I met with a number of professors doing research in psychology. After much consideration, I chose to complete my thesis in Professor Keith Nelson’s lab. His lab is devoted to research in the cognitive developmental area. Studies done in Prof. Nelson’s lab usually investigate language and cognitive developmental interventions for typically developing children as well as those with autism, all of which interested me.
My first semester of research in the lab was spent doing transcribing and coding for a few of the graduate students’ projects. This gave me the basic experience necessary to understand how research at a major university works. I also worked with Professor Nelson to conceptualize a research study for my senior thesis. For my research study, I would use a computer program developed to teach young, typically and atypically developing children their native language or one of several second languages. In the program, a student creates a sentence from a list of words, after which an animation of the sentence is displayed. However, instead of using this program on its intended audience, I would use this program to teach simple Swedish words and phrases to English speaking college students. Moreover, I would speed up or slow down the rates of presentation within the program to see how participants learn a new language at varying presentation speeds. Furthermore, working memory scores would be compiled for each participant to see the relationship between working memory, rate of presentation, and second language acquisition.
The conceptualization of a research study is far from the most difficult aspect. Putting my study together took a number of steps. First, I had to get approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), an organization whose job is to ensure that research is ethical and safe for those involved. Then I had to select and gain access to the proper materials with which to test my variables. Most importantly, I had to apply for funding before I could purchase any materials or have money for compensating subjects. Next, I had to post flyers around campus to recruit participants. Finally, I had to train other lab members in the proper procedures for running subjects. Without guidance from the graduate students working in the lab, I would have been clueless as to how to complete any of these steps.
At last it was time to begin running subjects in my study. I chose to run 24 participants through 8 sessions of the study. While the hours spent running subjects through the study were tedious, it was great to work one-on-one, teaching intrinsically motivated students a new language. This was my favorite part of the entire experience. On several occasions I passed a former participant somewhere around campus only to hear them yell out a “pojken!” or another Swedish word they learned in the study.
While I have just finished collecting data for my senior thesis, the hardest part is about to begin: the writing. Along with the written thesis comes the presentation of my data at the Undergraduate Exhibition in April. To think that a few semesters ago I didn’t have a major is shocking. My undergraduate research experience has taken me from being a clueless new Psych student to feeling like a full-fledged research psychologist. While I am not sure where I will end up after graduation, I know for sure that my research experience is going to be invaluable.