Diversity and Inclusion: The Baby and Child Rebel Lab values the participation and inclusion of individuals from diverse backgrounds in our research process. We are committed to conducting multicultural research, and we welcome diverse students to work as research assistants.

Time Commitment: For students working on studies with infants and/or children, I ask for at least a two semester commitment (summer/fall, fall/spring, spring/summer, spring/fall) because of the length of time required to train individuals on these studies—it generally takes 5-6 weeks to get someone fully trained and up and running the studies on their own.

If you still want to work in the lab, but can work for only one semester, you can work on studies with adults. These studies involve: 1) taking digital pictures of undergraduates posing various emotional expressions from different views and videotaping the students reciting some text; 2) collecting ratings of facial stimuli; and 3) creating stimulus materials using Adobe Photoshop. We will be using these stimuli for future face perception studies involving infants, children, and adults.

Summer: If you work during the summer, it entails being in the lab during sessions 2 and 3 to make the time commitment at least somewhat equivalent to the fall and spring semesters.

Hours: Students work in the lab for 9 hours a week and attend occasional lab meetings. The lab is open from 9-5 Monday through Saturday. Your 9 hours are set times to be at the lab and are assigned based on your time availability. It is important that you have chunks of time available to be at the lab, such as three 3-hour shifts or two 4.5-hour shifts. Anything less than a 2-hour shift is generally not ideal. 

Lab Responsibilities: You will have a wide range of responsibilities: recruiting and scheduling participants; conducting studies; assessing reliability; entering data; maintaining the photo and participant database; and other miscellaneous tasks (e.g., standardizing/creating stimuli in Photoshop or Final Cut Pro). Social skills and an ability to work independently are a must. Being reliable and responsible (i.e., being there when scheduled) are also a must because absence not only affects the lab, but impacts families who have appointments scheduled at the lab. Students in their second semester should let the lab managers know what they are interested in learning once they have mastered other lab tasks, so we can train you on data analyses, study design, or whatever skills you would like to acquire. 

Course Requirements: For each Fall or Spring semester in the lab, you receive 3 credit hours for PSY 498 (Independent Research) or PSY 496 (Independent Study). For the Summer semester, you receive 2 credit hours because the time in the lab is 2/3 of the time during the Fall or Spring semesters, although you can work more hours (13.5/week) to obtain 3 credits. Aside from your time at the lab, you will write a paper on the research we are conducting. Throughout the semester, you will write drafts of sections of the paper (Method, Intro, Results & Discussion) and we provide feedback to help you with your professional writing, all of which you should incorporate into the final paper.

If this opportunity is of interest to you, please complete our pre-interview questionnaire.