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Lynn Perry

090500 spotlight Lynn Perry.JPG
Department: 
Psychology
Question: 
Can you tell us a little bit about the conference?
Answer: 
The biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development is a three-day international conference on everything having to do with child development. This year it was held in Denver, CO and attracted a large group of researchers from such diverse fields as psychology, speech pathology, education, and government.
Question: 
What about the conference are you most excited?
Answer: 

It's exciting to learn about all the cutting-edge research in child development that is going on around the world and to know that policy experts who work for the government (and will help shape domestic policy in the long run) are in attendance and also learning about this research. Furthermore, speaking at this conference gave me the opportunity to present my work in front of a large audience and receive feedback from experts in fields other than my own.

Question: 
Can you tell us briefly about the work you are presenting?
Answer: 
I presented the work of a longitudinal training study I did that taught 1 ½ year-old children the names of common object categories that are well-organized by similarity in shape (e.g. bucket, can). Half of the children learned the names for similar members of these categories, and half learned the names for dissimilar members of these same categories. I found that training with dissimilar objects helped the children learn the trained categories better and acquire new words outside the lab at an accelerated rate. The variability helps children better abstract the basis for a category's organization (i.e. shape) and learn a general rule used for learning new categories.
Question: 
What advice can you give fellow graduate students about obtaining travel funding?
Answer: 

Take the time and effort to follow the directions. Write your essays as if you are talking to your grandmother. Grandma probably won't understand all the jargon of your field, and while she'll probably think what you're doing is important because she loves you, she'll need to hear about the bigger picture of why your work matters to appreciate it as much as you do.

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