UL Lullaby

Student Research Experience

Dear Students,

You are invited to participate in a research study on children’s English speech development and family language use in the State of Louisiana. 

The Project

This research project is titled

UL Lullaby: Louisiana Family Language Use and Child Speech Developmental Norms in English.

The purpose of this study is the development of speech developmental norms in typically developing English-speaking children in Louisiana and to identify the use of English dialect(s) or other language(s) (if any) by the parents/caregivers and/or young children in the family. The results of the study will contribute to developing a sensitive, culturally informed and evidence-based guide for enhancing clinical and educational speech assessment/intervention strategies for young English-speaking children with speech disorder, and/or other communication disorder affecting speech, language and literacy development in the State of Louisiana.

Student Researcher/Assistant Profile Criterion

Interested student researchers are undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Communicative Disorders, College of Liberal Arts at UL Lafayette for the duration of their term(s) there.

Your Incentive

Research experience in evidence-based practice for any UL Lafayette research-related projects, with strong prospects to participate in conference/workshop presentations, academic publications, and boosting qualifications for graduate/doctoral program admission at UL, in the state, and elsewhere!

Task

We will collect speech production data using a wordlist elicitation task from young children (ages 2-5 years), and demographic and family language use information from parents/caregivers utilizing questionnaires. Inclusion criteria are: parents and 2-5-year-old typically developing children who speak English and are Louisiana residents for, at least, the past 5 years. Do you know any families who meet these criteria? You can make this research happen! You may assist the UL Lullaby team jumpstart the project, if you want.  Once we have a data pool, you may engage further in mentored data analyses. We abide by the approved IRB ethical research standards; the IRB approval number for the project is noted at the end. 

Your Time Commitment

You decide! Required preliminary IRB research ethics training (CITI Training): 30-60 mins; Identifying and connecting with the family: about 1 hour; Data Collection: max 3 hours (1-2 meetings per family); Data Analyses: 2-4 hours per week. Are you delving deeper? Name your time commitment …  

Which Lullaby?

Join the team to find out!

Other Questions & Expression of Interest

Sounds fun! Want to know more? Send message to elena.babatsouli@louisiana.edu for appointment.
Express your interest and we will take it from there. My Office is at Burke-Hawthorne Room 246.                      

Dr. Elena Babatsouli

Department of Communicative Disorders
College of Liberal Arts
elena.babatsouli@louisiana.edu

UL Lafayette IRB approval number

IRB-24-076-CODI-OTHR