Colleen Davy, Psychology (Advisor: Brian MacWhinney)
3rd yr PIER, 3rd yr Psych
Colleen started out as an undergrad down the street at the University of Pittsburgh, where she majored in Psychology, Linguistics, and Spanish, with the intention of later becoming a Spanish teacher. Before this goal was realized, however, she discovered the wonderful world of second language acquisition research working in Natasha Tokowicz's PLUM (PsychoLinguistic Underpinnings of Multilingualism) Lab.  Later, she worked as a research assistant on a few different projects with the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, but primarily in Nel de Jong's lab investigating the use of the 4/3/2 task in developing fluent speech production in English as a second language through repetitive practice.  Today, she studies fluency development in speaking skills in second language Spanish students.  She is interested in tracking the development of speech through repetitive practice.  She uses oral repetition tasks to prompt repetitive practice of vocabulary items and grammatical constructions to aid in the proceduralization of speech production, allowing language learners to have more native-like speaking skills.  Her goals are twofold:  first, to build on our understanding of how exactly second language speakers go from formulating the message to producing speech; and second, to determine what kind of training can best lead to the development of speaking skills in a second language.  She is currently developing a computer-based tutor to provide students with speaking practice to help train new vocabulary items and grammatical constructions.