Student Spotlight: Ama Arhin, Language Science Undergrad Research Fellow

The Language Science Center awarded Ama Arhin an undergraduate research fellowship for spring 2023.

The Language Science Center awarded  Ama Arhin undergraduate research fellowship  for spring 2023. This fellowship is funded in part from the generous contributions of donors on  Giving Day Ama is a Psychology major, also working towards a minor in Human Development. She hopes to pursue postgraduate clinical studies in psychology after she graduates in May. Ama has been working as a research assistant in Professor Rachel Romeo 's Language, Experience, and Development (LEAD) lab since fall 2022. She is assisting with the design and preparation of the Preschool Language and Neural Engagement Study (PLANES), a longitudinal (age 3-4 years) study of how early language input affects the development of neural networks involved in language, executive function, and social cognition. With the support of this fellowship, she has also started work on an independent project, "Demographic Variation in Caregiver-Child Interaction & Language Development." The study focuses on how parent-child relationships are connected to child language experiences, and how this relationship might be affected by demographic factors such as socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and/or languages spoken at home.  Ama says, "I believe it is critical to examine how these factors contribute to language development, since most studies have historically excluded these groups or sought to average out or control for any variation." We look forward to seeing Ama's research presented at UMD's Undergraduate Research Day later this month.