The motivation for Trina Lord to study communication disorders dates back to her time in middle school. Lord completed a project about speech language pathology that taught her about the profession and the different career paths a speech-language pathologist (SLP) can take. Lord also had a speech disorder herself, which led to her working with a SLP in elementary and middle school to overcome her own communication challenges.
Now an undergraduate student majoring in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) at Penn State, Lord credited the SLP she worked with as part of her inspiration for embarking on this career path. Lord has even gone back to shadow that same SLP working with other patients over the years as she has progressed through the CSD degree program.
During her first year at Penn State, Lord decided she wanted to be involved in research as an undergraduate student to gain hands-on experience. She began reaching out to professors to see what opportunities might be available.
Carol Miller, professor of communication sciences and disorders and honors adviser to undergraduate students, was one Lord's first points of contact. Miller offered Lord an opportunity to work in her lab, the Child Language Development Laboratory. She also encouraged Lord to consider becoming a scholar in Schreyer Honors College.
All students in the Schreyer Honors College are required to complete a thesis as part of their graduation requirements. This can manifest in a number of ways including a literature review, involvement in a research lab or conducting an independent research study.
Through her work with Miller in the Child Language Development Lab, along with coursework in "CSD 300: Developmental Considerations in the Assessment and Treatment of Language Disorders," Lord said she was inspired to conduct her own language-based independent research study.
"I never realized you could dive so deep into language-based research," Lord said. "One specific area I enjoyed was fast mapping - how children learn what a word means in as little as one exposure. I realized I enjoyed this work and was interested in learning more but had no clue where to start or what I wanted to do with it."
Over the past three years, Lord has worked as a preschool teacher in both typically structured and play-based preschools where she has developed a love for teaching. Through conversations with Miller, Lord decided to combine her affinity for the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and language-based research with her passion for teaching children.
For her thesis, "Fast mapping of novel words in play-based vs. story-based exposure types," Lord developed and conducted a research study comparing the outcomes of story-based learning versus play-based learning.
Lord focused her study on three to five-year-olds because fast mapping has been shown to begin when children are around two to three years of age. She wanted to examine the differences between children just starting fast mapping versus those a bit further in their development.
Under Miller's guidance, Lord conducted the study in preschools in and around Pittsburgh. She presented two nonsense words - words that are not real but follow the rules of the English language - to the children in each group. Depending on the group, she would either read them a story containing these words or play with them using toys she had designated as each nonsense word. For example, Lord would use an everyday item, such as a stuffed animal the children had not seen before, and explain to the children that it was called one of the nonsense words.
To measure the children's level of retention from both approaches, Lord had them identify a picture of the object out of a group or have the children describe in detail the object they associated with each word or what occurred in the story they read.
Results did not show much difference in the level of retention between the play-based preschools and story-based preschools, but Lord noted the small sample size and limited time to conduct the study as potential barriers to identifying meaningful differences. With graduate school on the horizon, she said she hopes to continue and expand on this research for greater understanding of the approaches.
Gaining undergraduate research experience taught Lord valuable lessons about work and about herself, she said.
"Hard work pays off, I think is the biggest lesson," Lord said. "It's made me more confident in myself and in my work. I've already seen this experience paying off as I've applied to graduate schools. They've taken note of the fact I've conducted research as an undergraduate student."
Lord recommended getting involved in research as an undergraduate student to anyone looking to gain hands-on experience working closely with professors who are also professionals in their fields.
"Reach out to everyone, because you never know where an opportunity is going to pop up," Lord said. "The faculty in CSD want to hear about your interests and ideas and want you to succeed at doing something you enjoy. They're always happy to help you along the way."
