After five years of giving her all to the Child Language Lab, the University of Connecticut, and her doctoral studies, DOCTOR Cynthia Boo has triumphantly defended her dissertation and been awarded her PhD. We are beyond proud to have seen Cynthia grow as a student, researcher, and mentor to others during her time here. We know that she will accomplish amazing things in her next step– a postdoc position at Dr. Marjorie Rhodes’s lab at NYU– and beyond. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, Dr. Boo!
Cynthia and Letty celebrate Cynthia’s hooding.The newly minted Dr. Boo.Cynthia’s dissertation, “Dyadic speech between friends during gameplay: Insights into friendship via language use.”Cynthia’s research questions.
From July 15-19, the CLL’s P.I. Letty and lab manager Grace attended the 2024 congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), held at Charles University in Prague. Grace presented a poster, and Letty presented two posters on behalf of 3rd-year student Kaya LeGrand. We were happy to see many familiar faces at IASCL: Dr. Esther (Yi) Su of Central South University, Dr. Jill de Villiers of Smith College, and Dr. Stephanie Durrleman of Fribourg University, to name a few. Visiting Prague in the height of summer was a treat, too!
Letty at Kaya’s poster, “Latent Profiles of Verb Development in Autism and Typical Development.”Kaya’s second poster, “Lexical-Semantic Composition of Verb Vocabulary in Autism and Typical Development.”Letty and Grace at their poster, “Autistic and Neurotypical Child-to-Caregiver Alignment in a Cooperative Task.”
As the 2023-24 school year wrapped up, we gathered to celebrate another great year at the CLL and commemorate our four graduating seniors: Liz Sahagun (with us since 2021), Yasmin Andalib (with us since 2022), Lindsey Gaspard (with us since 2022), and Kylie Robinshaw (with us since 2023).
Left to right: Lindsey Gaspard, Yasmin Andalib, Letty Naigles, Kylie Robinshaw, Liz SahagunLeft to right: Letty Naigles, Kaya LeGrand, Yasmin Andalib, Lindsey Gaspard, Nolyette Verastegui, Sarah Courtney, Liz Sahagun, Kayleigh Gerrity, Kylie RobinshawLeft to right: Grace Corrigan, Kaya LeGrand, Yasmin Andalib, Lindsey Gaspard, Nolyette Verastegui, Sarah Courtney, Liz Sahagun, Kayleigh Gerrity, Kylie Robinshaw
We also got one final group photo with Cynthia and Grace, both of whom will be leaving UConn in August for their next steps.
Left to right: Cynthia Boo, Letty Naigles, Lindsey Gaspard, Grace Corrigan, Liz Sahagun, Kylie Robinshaw, Yasmin Andalib, Nolyette Verastegui, Kaya LeGrand, Kayleigh Gerrity, Sarah Courtney
April 24 saw another meeting of the annual UConn Language Fest, or “Langfest,” taking place in Konover Auditorium and the Bousfield Psychology atrium, with cross-disciplinary researchers convening to discuss what we all love: language. This year, Langfest (organized in part by CLL’s Kaya LeGrand) featured a graduate student symposium, a data blitz that included CLL’s Kylie Robinshaw & Grace Corrigan, and a poster session (pictures below). There was also the ever-lauded Langfest sundae bar…
Doctoral candidate Cynthia Boo presents her poster, “Variation in autism and ADHD symptomatology reveals differential use of discourse markers.”Kylie Robinshaw (’24) presents her poster, “Gender differences in linguistic measures among three-year-olds with ASD.”Yasmin Andalib (honors ’24) presents her poster, “Narrative macrostructure: A comparison between autistic and typically developing adolescents.”Lab coordinator Grace Corrigan presents her poster, “Relationships between alignment and cooperative task performance in autistic and neurotypical teenager-caregiver dyads.”
The 27th annual spring Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Exhibition was held on April 12-13, and CLL seniors Yasmin Andalib and Kylie Robinshaw had the chance to present their respective research projects. Thanks to grants from the Office of Undergraduate Research, both Yasmin and Kylie were able to travel to Durham, NC to present their research at the Meeting on Language in Autism (MoLA). Now, at Frontiers, the UConn community got to learn about Yasmin and Kylie’s projects too!
Yasmin presents her honors thesis research, “Narrative macrostructure: A comparison between autistic and typically developing adolescents.”Kylie presents her independent research project, “Gender differences in linguistic measures among three-year-olds with ASD.”
CLL doctoral candidate Cynthia Boo has been awarded the CLAS Graduate School Summer Dissertation Fellowship to support her dissertation work this summer!
In the week following MoLA, Letty spent time in São Paulo and Florianópolis, Brazil, to scout out a potential venue for the 2027 meeting of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). While there, she gave talks at the University of São Paulo and the Universidade Federale de Santa Catarina (Federal University of Santa Catarina), explored the beautiful scenery in both cities, and enjoyed delicious Brazilian food. Thank you to the locals who made her feel so welcome in Brazil!
Advertisement for Letty’s talk, “Autism Illuminates Language: Acquisition, Development, Use,” at the University of São Paulo.
Students at the University of São Paulo listen to Letty’s talk.
Letty and her colleagues at the University of São Paulo.
Letty with her colleagues and their students at the Universidade Federale de Santa Catarina.
The view of Florianópolis from up above.
A nice beach afternoon in Florianópolis.
Some of the tasty food Letty enjoyed in São Paulo.
Six members of the Child Language Lab had the privilege of attending the 2024 Meeting on Language in Autism, held at Duke University from March 14-16. We also met up with former lab member Dr. Lee Tecoulesco, now doing his postdoc at Boys Town Research Hospital.
Left to right: Kaya LeGrand, Grace Corrigan, Yasmin Andalib, Lee Tecoulesco, Letty Naigles, Cynthia Boo, Kylie Robinshaw.
In the thick of her dissertation data collection and writing, our fifth-year graduate student Cynthia Boo presented a poster based on findings from her ongoing collaboration with the UC Davis MIND Institute: specifically, group differences in discourse marker production among children with ASD, children with ADHD, and children with co-occurring ASD and ADHD. Furthermore, our 3rd-year graduate student, Kaya LeGrand, was invited to give a talk on some of the research she did for her masters thesis: an examination of longitudinal verb acquisition trajectories from LSEL Visits 1-6.
Kaya LeGrand presents her talk, “Longitudinal analysis of verb production in autism spectrum disorder.”
Thanks in part to travel grants from the UConn Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), we were able to bring undergraduates Yasmin Andalib (’24) and Kylie Robinshaw (’24), both of whom presented posters.
Yasmin’s honors thesis analyzes the narrative macrostructure of our teen and young adult participants’ personal narratives and their storytelling from the book Tuesday by David Wiesner.
Yasmin Andalib presents her poster, “Narrative macrostructure: A comparison between autistic and typically developing adolescents.”
Kylie’s independent project utilizes data from the UC Davis MIND Institute and examines sex differences in the linguistic markers produced by three-year-old children on the autism spectrum.
Kylie Robinshaw presents her poster, “Gender differences in linguistic measures among three-year-olds with ASD.”
Lab coordinator Grace Corrigan presented two posters based on the projects she has been working on over the last year: close phonological transcription of LSEL participants at Visit 2, and examination of child-to-caregiver linguistic alignment at Visit 9.
Grace Corrigan presents her poster, “Differential phonological profiles of typically developing toddlers, low-verbal toddlers with ASD, and middle-verbal toddlers with ASD.”Grace Corrigan presents her poster, “Relationships between alignment and cooperative task performance in autistic and neurotypical teenager-caregiver dyads.”
CLL doctoral candidate Cynthia Boo received not one but two travel grants to support her attendance at this year’s Meeting on Language in Autism (MoLA) in Durham, NC. The UConn Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) gave her a Travel Award, and she received additional funding in the form of the Psychological Sciences Departmental Award. Congratulations to Cynthia for the hard work and excellent research that led to her being granted these funds!
