PIRE

To promote the international engagement by U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to conduct research in the language sciences, in 2010 a group of us at the Center for Language Science was awarded a 5-year grant ($2.8 million) from the National Science Foundation Partnerships in International Research and Education (OISE 0968369: Bilingualism, mind, and brain: An interdisciplinary program in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and cognitive neuroscience; PI, Judith F. Kroll; Co- PIs, Giuli Dussias, and Janet van Hell) The program is know known by the acronym PIRE. We also obtained funds from The College of the Liberal Arts to provide similar experiences to non-US undergraduate and graduate students. During the award period, we sent over 50 undergraduate students to our partner sites in Beijing and Hong Kong (China), Bangor (Wales), Granada (Spain), Tarragona (Spain), Leipzig (Germany), Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and Lund (Sweden).

In 2016, we applied and were again awarded a second 5-year grant ($5 million) from the National Science Foundation Partnerships in International Research and Education (OISE 1545900:Translating cognitive and brain sciences in the laboratory and field to language learning environments; PI at Penn State, Paola E. Dussias; PI at UC Irvine, Judith F. Kroll; Co- PIs at Penn State, Janet van Hell and John Lipski), this time to create an international network of translational research on language learning for undergraduate and graduate students. So far, we have trained a combined 109 undergraduate students (50 at PSU and 59 at UC Riverside and UC-Irvine).

Check out the sub-set of the PIRE locations that our students have traveled to over the last 5 years!

Puerto Rico

Many of our students have gone to the University of Puerto Rico for their PIRE projects. Assisted by Dr. Rosa Guzzardo, students have conducted experiments on bilingual language processing and code-switching.

Spain

Over the years, many of our students have spent their PIRE fellowship at the University of Granada in Granada Spain working with Dr. Teresa Bajo. These projects typically looked at second language English processing using eye-tracking.

Germany

In the summer of 2022, a student went to the Technische Universität Braunschweig (Technical University of Braunschweig) in Braunschweig, Germany and worked with Dr. Holger Hopp on a project looking at second language English speech comprehension using eye-tracking.

China

In the summer of 2019, a student went to 北京师范大学 (Beijing Normal University), in Beijing, China and worked with Dr. Taomei Guo on a project looking at second language English speech comprehension using eye-tracking.

Colombia

Over the summer of 2019, a group of students went to the Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín (University pf Antioquia) in Medellín, Colombia and worked with Dr. Marianne Dieck on a project looking how speakers adapt to speaker variation within and across different dialects of the same language.