Category: Project Announcement

Call for Proposals: ARiEAL International Scholar Award Program

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The Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL) at McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, invites applications from highly qualified and outstanding
international graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early career and/or established researchers working in the field of cognitive science of language. The goal of this award is to provide support for international researchers and students whose research activities align with that at ARiEAL. While this opportunity is open to any international scholar, preference will be given to graduate students and early career researchers from underserved countries, especially to students and researchers from Brazil, Cuba, Ghana, Jamaica, and Nigeria, and war-zone countries.

ARiEAL will fund up to four international scholars to be in-residence at ARiEAL for up to 120 days in the
Fall 2023/Winter 2024 terms (roughly between September 1 and April 30). The applicants may indicate
the preferred dates of their stay. Each fellowship is valued at roughly $12,000CAD and includes airfare,
lodging, some funding for meals, University Health Insurance Plan (UHIP), and other incidental fees.
Research and research collaboration are key foci of this program and selected scholars are expected to
contribute to our extensive research activities. Selected scholars will also have the chance to showcase their research at one of our workshops or speaker events and to attend classes.

To learn more, and to view the submission requirements, visit ARiEAL here: https://arieal.mcmaster.ca/news/international-scholar-award-program

or view the call as a pdf:

Call for ProposalsDownload

COVID-19 & Open Office Hours (online)

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Due to the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic, many across the Words in the World network have suspended face-to-face operations including experimentation in traditional laboratory environments. We are therefore making a concerted effort to migrate as many of our research projects to an online format as possible. By moving toward this goal, we are working not only to protect the health and safety of our colleagues and research participants, but also to move forward with the majority of our research endeavours.

With these purposes in mind, we’d like to take this opportunity to introduce a new Words in the World feature: Open Office Hours. The purpose of the Open Office Hour is to provide an accessible online version of the traditional university office hour, in which our research partners hold a brief informal discussion on a topic within their expertise and take questions regarding that topic. Our first Open Office Hours are listed below and focus on online experimentation in Psycholinguistic research.

Update

A follow-up office hour with Dr. Kuperman is scheduled for Friday, March 27, from 1 – 2pm Eastern (GMT -4). See the announcement here: https://bit.ly/33K3Svy

“How to collect psycholinguistic data from home: Introduction to crowdsourcing tools”

Host: Victor Kuperman

Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST (GMT -4)

Ability to collect experimental data outside of the lab is of great importance for reaching out to populations outside of university convenience subject pools. This importance is even greater when lab testing is undesirable. This first session of “open office hours” will introduce rich possibilities for data collection using crowdsourcing tools like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com). We will cover several basic types of experiments (surveys, collection of ratings, linguistic judgments, and written responses), and discuss practicalities of online testing. Several small experiments will be created and results collected and discussed.

No prior knowledge is expected. The session is designed for 20-30 minutes of an informal presentation, followed by the Q&A. Ideas for experiments are very welcome.

Connect via Zoom: https://bit.ly/394W74o

See the event listing for alternative ways to connect.

“Running chronometric experiments online using PsychoPy3″

Host: Jordan Gallant

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 (GMT -4)

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST

Connect via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/495738797

Online experiments offer a range of possibilities and benefits that have yet to be fully explored. This office hour will introduce PsychoPy3, a new experiment development software that uses Javascript to create experiments that can be run on web-browsers. In the first half of the office hour, I will demonstrate how a simple lexical decision experiment can be 1) created, 2) hosted online, and 3) run using participants recruited via Mechanical Turk. The second half will be a Q&A where the limitations/possibilities of PsychoPy3 and online chronometric experimentation in general can be discussed.

Aphasia Friendly Canada project site is live!

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We are excited to announce that the Aphasia Friendly Canada site is now accessible at http://aphasiafriendlycanada.ca/. This project is spearheaded by Dr. Lori Buchanan at the University of Windsor. It hosts the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign, The Word Exchange, and The Caregiver Exchange.

The Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign offers to educate business owners and employees on aphasia and provides them with personalized training to improve accessibility for individuals with communication disorders.

The Word Exchange is a free adult conversation group hosted in Windsor, Ontario, where people with aphasia can meet with each other for conversation and engage in activities facilitated by trained student volunteers.

The Caregiver Exchange offers support and educational resources for caregivers of individuals with aphasia. Meetings are currently held in Windsor.