Students get hands-on research experience with a grant from UiO:Life Science
Maia Bangsund has already started her summer project and will be researching for a total of six weeks full time at BabyLing Lab where she contributes to an ongoing study on children's early language development.
Maia is about to finish the third year of her professional degree in psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Oslo. She is one of 40 students who gain relevant research experience from the project she has received through UiO:Life Science.
From theory to practice
Through the summer project Maia gets in addition to practical experience, insight into various aspects of a research project and has been involved in the development of a questionnaire, pilot projects and now she is involved in the main study where her task is to facilitate when parents and infants come to participate in the language lab. - I am very interested in children's development in general, and find it very rewarding to be involved in researching children's language development, says Maia Bangsund.
How do children learn language?
The study is part of the project BABYLEARN: Role of infant-directed-speech in early language development, and is an interdisciplinary collaborative project that is led by Natalia Kartushina, MultiLing, Faculty of Humanities, and Julien Mayor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences. The study that Maia contributes to is part of research fellow Audun Rosslund's doctoral dissertation and is funded by the Research Council of Norway. The study aims to identify the role of the learning environment in young children's language acquisition. At the BabyLing Lab at the Department of Psychology, they have recruited parents with children who will participate in the study from when the child is six months old and up to 18 months. Every three months, parents and children will return to participate in the studies.
Useful experience
Maia applied for a summer project at UiO:Life Science in January and was awarded the project after a digital matchmaking seminar in March. She is happy for the opportunity to work on the research project and will consider a job in the future where she can combine working clinically with research.
About the life science summer projects
This is the fourth year UiO:Life Science offers summer projects to students. One of the tasks of UiO:Life Science is to recruit, educate and develop talented students. The summer research project for students is part of this work.
The aim of the summer research projects is to provide the students with practical experience of real research that addresses a social challenge within health or environment. It is also desirable that the projects provide the students with insight into interdisciplinary research.
Read about the application process