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Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site: Developing Social Minds


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Academic Level:
For most summer research programs, this is your upcoming status as of the fall. Always check with the individual program's website for details.

Undergraduates - First Year
Undergraduates - Sophomore
Undergraduates - Junior
Undergraduates - Senior

Description:
The Boston College Developmental Psychology program is a NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates summer internship. Summer interns will gain hands-on experience in all aspects of socio-cognitive developmental psychology research while also participating in professional development meetings and learning computer programming. This is an excellent program for students who want to learn more about research and/or who may be interested in pursuing graduate school. Successful applicants will work full-time for 10 weeks. Students will be paid $600 per week plus provided on-campus housing across 10 weeks to participate.

This internship will take place in-person on Boston College's campus. Students will be provided with on-campus housing in addition to their stipend.

There are four participating developmental psychology labs. Students will be accepted to primarily work within one of these labs for the duration of the summer. Students will indicate their lab preference in the application.

Participating Labs:

THE CANINE COGNITION LAB (Dr. Angie Johnston) investigates the evolutionary origins of human social learning by comparing human children and pet dogs. Building off of traditional developmental methods used with infants and children, interns will have the opportunity to gain new perspectives on classic developmental questions by investigating which aspects of human social learning are shared with dogs and which may be unique to humans.

THE COOPERATION LAB (Dr. Katherine McAuliffe) studies the development of cooperation in childhood, how the development of cooperation varies across different social and cultural contexts, and how an emerging psychology of cooperation in children interfaces with other aspects of conceptual development like perspective taking and group bias.

THE INFANT AND CHILD COGNITION LAB (Dr. Sara Cordes) studies how infants, children, and adults track number and acquire formal mathematical concepts (from verbal counting in preschoolers to algebraic concepts in teenagers), with a large focus on how learning of these concepts is influenced by social contexts and gender stereotypes.

THE LANGUAGE LEARNING LAB (Dr. Joshua Hartshorne) takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying how children learn language. In addition to traditional developmental research methods, the lab makes use of massive online experiments, in which tens or even hundreds of thousands of children and adults participate in a single experiment, and computational models of language acquisition.

Please visit the website to learn more about eligibilty and how to apply!


Application Deadline: 3/15/2023

Program Dates: 5/31/2023 - 8/4/2023

Participating Institution(s):
(Click an institution to see all programs it hosts)
Boston College (Lead)

Program Materials:
 • Program Website 

This Program can be Described by:
Academic Disciplines:
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences

Keywords:
Developmental Psychology
Experimental Psychology
Psychology
Social Psychology

Learn More and Apply!

This program is funded by:
National Science Foundation (NSF)


Page last updated 1/23/2023
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