Reading Habits in Children Learning English as a Second Language

For 10- to 15-year-olds

This study will take place on three video calls, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select three 90-minute sessions across three different days. During the first session, your child will answer questions on their language background and reading habits. Next, they will read sentences and answer comprehension questions about these sentences. During the second session, your child will play various brain games to measure working memory, phonological awareness, and processing speed. On the third and final session, your child will complete an English grammar assessment followed by a few more brain games.

What do you choose to read? Children have different reading habits and experiences based on what topics they find interesting, how much they enjoy reading, and whether they’re reading print books or content online. We’re curious as to how children’s varied reading habits influences their ability to read and understand different types of sentences. Research suggests that both volume of reading and the types of text read people choose to read (e.g., fiction, news, blogs, etc.) affect sentence processing. We also include measures of cognitive ability (e.g., working memory, phonological awareness, etc.) that have been found to affect language processing.

3 sessions; ~1.5 hours each

We will send you an Amazon.com gift code within one week of participation. For each session the gift card will be $30, which means $90 for completing all three sessions. To be eligible for the gift card, your child must be in the age range for the study and visible during the video chat sessions.