The Baby Learning Lab (Principal Investigator: Dr. Lauren Emberson) is recruiting a volunteer research assistant.
Position Overview
In the position, you will be assigned to a particular project (Exploration). The project represents a novel approach to studying infant neurocognitive development. In that, infants and parents are invited to the lab and asked to play freely, just as they do at home. We measure the infant’s brain using state-of-the-art neuroimaging technology. As each infant and parent pair is allowed to interact in any way they like, we need a way to quantify their behaviours. This is where you come in!
Position Responsibilities
In this position, your main responsibility will be behavioral coding, i.e., watching videos and manually tagging onsets and durations of specific behaviors of interest. As you can imagine, coding requires a lot of attention to detail (although it doesn’t hurt that you will be watching cute babies playing when doing that!). While coding will be done independently, you will be working as part of a group of RAs – the Virtuoso RAs. The team will meet once a week. The goal of the meetings will be to go over the coding you have done, resolve ambiguities, and refine the coding scheme definitions as necessary (e.g., add examples). Research has shown that teams that work well together have higher inter-rater reliability (i.e., different team members code the same behaviors in a consistently similar manner), so the weekly meetings will also help build team spirit. As you can imagine, it is important that everyone has the same level of understanding and is on the same page. During the meeting, you will be asked to give an update on your progress and the meeting will end with a plan for the next week. Each week during the meeting, Senior Research Assistant will set an expected number of videos that should be coded for that week.
Position Requirements
The Baby Learning Lab is looking for motivated an undergraduate student who meet these requirements:
- Minimum Commitment: 9 hours/week (In person)
- Minimum Semester Commitment: 2 semesters (8 months)
- Will References Be Requested: No (but a student can choose to submit them)
- Will Transcript Be Requested: No
- Will Interview Be Requested: Yes
Additional Information Required: A description of prior informal or formal experience that might be relevant to the position (working or interacting with infants, children, or parents), if any, and (2) a statement regarding how the student would support and contribute to equity, diversity and inclusion in the lab.
To Apply
Submit an application through the lab’s website and one of the lab coordinators will reach out to you soon. You can find the application form here: https://babylearninglab.psych.ubc.ca/join-the-lab/undergraduate-students/
Posting end date: March 7, 2025
About the Baby Learning Lab
The Baby Learning Lab, directed by Dr. Lauren Emberson, studies the capacity of the infant brain to learn, and how these capacities develop across the first months and years of life. To understand the learning mechanisms of the infant brain, we utilize both behavioural (i.e., quantifying actions or eye-movements) and neuroimaging (i.e., functional near-infrared spectroscopy or ‘fNIRS’) methodologies in our research.
