People and Studies
Lab People
Dr. Rachel Schmale, Director
I came to North Park University in Fall 2008 after my graduate training in developmental psychology at Purdue University. I have two B.A. degrees (Psychology and Spanish and Portuguese) from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Purdue University. My research asks the question: How is children’s acquisition of language affected by language variability? In particular, I am interested in how young children’s early representations of words are impacted by variation in voice, dialect, foreign accent, and emotion.
Kayla Stevens, Research Assistant
I am a Psychology major and Spanish minor at North Park University from Burnsville, MN. With this focus I hope to go onto graduate school to obtain a master’s degree in school counseling or social work in order to work with children and youth. I have been given the incredible opportunity to gain experiences in the field of Psychology by working alongside Dr. Schmale in the North Park University Baby Lab.
Collaborators
Current Baby Lab Studies
All of our research studies aim to further our understanding of how children develop language. Depending on the age of your child and the question of interest, the details of different research studies may vary. In some studies we will measure your child’s looking preferences to pictures while listening to speech sounds, while in others we will measure the amount of time it takes for your child to get used to a picture or sound that is repeated several times.
20 Months
- Can toddlers learn a new word when speakers with different voices pronounce it?
- Can toddlers learn a new word when it is pronounced in different emotions?
24 Months
- Can English-learning toddlers learn a word when speakers with different foreign accents or regional dialects pronounce it?
- Are there benefits of exposure to foreign-accented speech for infants learning more than one language?
30 Months
- Are older toddlers better at accommodating variation when learning words?
Please note that our studies change often, so contact the lab for the most up-to-date information!
Recent Publications
The following papers may not be final versions and may differ from the published versions minimally. They are offered here to ensure timely distribution of scholarly material for educational purposes, but copyrights and other rights are retained by copyright holders.
Schmale, R., Hollich, G. J., & Seidl, A. (in press). Contending with foreign accent in early word learning. Journal of Child Language.
Schmale, R., Cristià, A., Seidl, A., & Johnson, E. K. (2010). Developmental changes in infants’ ability to cope with dialect variation in word recognition. Infancy, 15(6), 650-662..
Schmale, R., & Seidl, A. (2009). Accommodating variability in voice and foreign accent: Flexibility of early word representations. Developmental Science, 12(4), 583–601.