Virginia Victoria Valian - US grants

The purpose of the program of research outlined in this grant proposal is to determine how child and adult language learners use the linguistic environment in acquiring the formal structure of a language. The relation between linguistic input and learning will be investigated in two major areas. The first area concerns the nature and role of linguistic feedback in first language acquisition: what type of feedback exists naturally; what type of feedback, when used experimentally, accelerates acquisition? The second area concerns how beginning learners, whether they are two-year-olds acquiring their native language or adults acquiring an artificial language, map out the basic pattern of a language. The project will investigate the roles played by two different variables: very high-frequency syntactic markers, and reference. A variety of methods and a range of subject populations will be utilized. Computer-assisted analysis of natural conversations between two-year-olds and their mothers will be used to investigate whether parents supply children with linguistically useful replies. A training study will investigate experimentally the facilitating effects of different kinds of feedback on two- years-olds' acquisition of questions; a similar study will investigate different types of feedback to adults learning an artificial language. Experimental studies of artificial language learning with older children and adults, investigating the role of reference and syntactic markers, will be performed. Computer modeling of adult language learning will be used to examine different hypotheses of how adult and child learning of phrases occurs. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a theory of language learning which will specify just how learners utilize environmental cues. Our work should have implications for learning theory within language, and should also have implications for how to accelerate acquisition among the language-delayed and among second-language learners.

The project will produce on-line tutorials for SMET students and faculty at colleges and universities, and for anyone else interested in a summary of research about the role of gender in science careers. The tutorials will be developed using Powerpoint slides with voice-over narration. Each will include an annotated bibliography, a questionnaire for site visitors to fill out (voluntarily), the opportunity to send queries and comments to PI, and question and answer material from those emailed messages.

The work will be performed at Hunter College - CUNY and the tutorials will be mounted on a Hunter College server. The tutorials can thus be reached by anyone in the world with access to the web. Once a demonstration tutorial is created, the PI will contact educational institutions and groups concerned with gender equity in science in order to invite such groups to evaluate the tutorial and to provide a link to the Hunter College site. As the project continues, more organizations and groups will be invited to create links to the site.

Tutorials like these do not currently exist. The PI is uniquely qualified as the author of a published book on women's advancement in the professions (extensively summarizing research), as a cognitive psychologist who has developed new courses related to gender, as a frequent presenter on the topic (having given 100+ presentations to and discussions with science students and educators), and as the developer of a web site for prospective graduate students to Hunter's MA Program in Psychology. The PI in particular will leverage experience giving lectures to diverse audiences.

Outcome measures will be evaluated from a) the number of visits to the site and to each tutorial, b) the number of educational institutions and organizations with links to the site, c) analysis of questionnaires and emailed messages. Feedback results that are relevant to the larger community will be posted to the site once they have been analyzed.

Science-based information about inadvertent bias in evaluations of men and women is available in technical sources but is not known to most students or educators. The resulting product will provide a suite of 15-minute tutorials that could be incorporated into workshops, briefings, classroom discussions, web sites, and on-line courses aimed at anyone studying the underrepresentation of women in SMET. The content drawing on many research findings and results is a substantive and accessible complement to many briefings and reports that primarily present summaries of statistics.

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Virginia Valian, Dr. Elaine C. Klein, and Dr. Gita Martohardjono will conduct three years of research on language acquisition. The project investigates the comprehension and production of temporal markers in Standard American English (SAE), varying second language learners' first language (Spanish or Chinese) and the age when learners begin acquisition (6-8 years or 20-30 years). The project will emphasize comparisons of monolingual SAE speakers and fluent SAE-Chinese speakers. Multiple tasks will be used for all participants, and identical tasks will be used with child and adult participants. The research addresses questions about the mechanisms underlying the comprehension and production of temporal markers, such as whether syntactic similarity between the learner's first and second languages affects learning of the second language.

The research will serve immigrant and other underrepresented groups. The teaching of SAE in urban schools and community language programs suffers from inadequate knowledge about second language. Errors with temporal markers are common in the speech of non-native SAE speakers, and they are resistant to change. But the source of these errors remains a puzzle to scientists and educators alike. This project asks to what extent mastery of temporal markers depends on specific features of a learner's first language. The knowledge gained from this project will also help improve instructional materials that target specific areas of difficulty, such as the separation between tense and aspect. It will also help pedagogy by giving teachers an understanding of the specific types of difficulty that learners have.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed studies aim to understand the structure of the decisions that affect success in academic science and academic medicine via quantitative analyses of recommendation letters, evaluations of candidates for junior tenure-track positions, and the awarding of marks of distinction like prizes. The application focuses on the interaction between gender schemas and gatekeepers in order to understand the mechanisms of decisions that affect the careers of men and women. The ultimate goal is to improve the accuracy of recognition and reward of talent in the sciences. The proposed research will give search committees and award committees research-based information about how to improve evaluations in three areas: Letters of recommendation. Do letters of recommendation for job candidates in cancer medicine and research differ systematically as a function of sex of the person for whom the letter is being written or the sex status of the letter writer? What objective characteristics, as detailed in curricula vitae are related to characteristics of the letters? Short lists. What objective characteristics of candidates determine the composition of short lists in cancer medicine and research? What role does sex play? Characteristics of letters of recommendation and CVs will be correlated with search committee decisions. Awards and prizes. What objective characteristics determine conferrals of distinction, such as membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academies, and discipline-internal prizes and awards? What role does sex play? Are there sex differences in productivity, citations, and awards that cannot be attributed to structural factors such as location at an elite research university or institute? Are there differences by field, as a function of the percentages of men and women in the field or as a function of how "technical" the field is perceived as being? Two fields - neuroscience and immunology - are targeted. A unique feature of the application is collaboration across fields and institutions. Social science concepts and methods are used to understand the causes of women's lesser representation compared to men's in academic science and to improve women's advancement. The four principal investigators are in a) cancer medicine and research, b) cognitive psychology c) industrial-organizational psychology. The proposed team will conduct basic research, yielding quantitative data, with applications to careers in cancer medicine and research. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The studies address the following principal question: how is merit assessed in science and medicine? The answer is important on both theoretical and applied fronts. Decision-making about human abilities, competence, and promise requires integrating qualitatively different pieces of information from a variety of sources. How people integrate such information, what objective indicators they use, and what predispositions they come to the evaluation setting with, are little understood. On the applied front, there are important consequences of the small number of women in positions of power and prestige. First, if women do not get their fair share of prizes and awards, their good but unrecognized ideas cannot move their fields in productive directions. Second, younger women may be tacitly discouraged from a high-powered career upon seeing how few women occupy positions of power and prestige. Third, gatekeepers may make mistakes in evaluating candidates for positions, promotion, awards, and positions of distinction, failing to recruit and retain the best talent.