The goal of this program is to provide a comprehensive, hands-on research experience to highly motivated students, while making valuable contributions to cognitive science.
Our lab explores how linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities arise during human development. A central goal of our research is exploring how these different aspects of development interact with one another.
Interns will work closely with the lab manager, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and each other, and will meet with Professor Srinivasan to discuss their research. Interns will be involved in many facets of the research process, such as: assisting with data collection, working on stimuli creation and preparation of study materials, reading relevant theoretical and empirical papers, recruiting participants, and processing or analyzing data. Interns will also have the opportunity to test participants at preschools or children’s museums in the Bay Area. Lastly, interns will attend weekly lab meetings and reading groups to discuss the theory behind research projects, and will have the opportunity to present on the projects they are assigned during the internship. We hope that interns will come away from these activities with an enriched understanding of language and cognitive development.
This is a 9-week internship program that requires 30 hours of work per week and will be held at UC Berkeley. The program runs from June 1st – July 31, 2020, and is unpaid. We are willing to accommodate a slightly later start date (~June 15th or so at the latest) if you are on the quarter system or if your school semester ends after June 1st. We recommend applicants apply for outside funding, but will provide a stipend of $1500 to those who are not able to secure funding. Please note that we are unable to assist in finding or providing housing in the Bay Area.
Who Should Apply?
This program is designed for undergraduates, graduating seniors, and recent graduates who are interested in pursuing graduate work in psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, or related fields and/or students who are interested in working toward an undergraduate honors thesis. While we are open to all applicants who are motivated and fit the requirements, due to processing time and cost constraints, we will be unable to sponsor a visa. The LCD Lab does not accept high school students into our Summer Internship. If you are interested in working in the lab, please wait to apply until after you are 18 and have enrolled in a college or university.
Qualifications
Requirements:
- Strong interest in language acquisition and/or cognitive development.
- Coursework in: psychology, linguistics, or cognitive science.
- Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
- Strong communication skills in spoken and written English.
Additional Preferred Skills (Not Required):
- Experience working in a research laboratory.
- Computer programming experience.
- Data analysis experience (R).
- Experience working with children.
- Experience with eye tracking technology (SMI).
- Experience with behavioral coding (Datavyu).
- Experience with Excel and PowerPoint.
- Experience with Qualtrics and/or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
How To Apply
Applications for Summer 2020 will be open from January 13 to March 15 at 8:00 AM.
Please familiarize yourself with our research, complete the online application, and submit all materials by March 15th at 8:00 AM PST. Applications will be reviewed after this deadline and you will be contacted within one month.You will need to submit the below materials as part of the application:
- Essay: Please write a two – four page (double spaced) essay that answers the following questions: (1) What are you hoping to gain from this program? (2) What area of language acquisition and/or cognitive development are you interested in? (3) What has prepared you for this intership? (Please use the program qualifications list on our website to guide your answer).
- CV / Resume
- Transcript
- (Optional) References. It is optional but we strongly encourage all applicants to have one or two letters of recommendation submitted with their application. (NOTE: We only accept letters directly from the person writing them. Please arrange to have letters sent to our lab manager, Jon Wehry, at lcdmanager@berkeley.edu.) Please upload your documents in PDF format. Please name your documents as: FirstName_LastName_DocumentName.pdf EXAMPLE: Noah_Davis_essay.pdf.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the internship, please email our lab manager, Jon Wehry, at lcdmanager[at]berkeley[dot]edu and put “Summer Internship” in the subject line.