Abbey is a recent graduate from the University of Oregon and during the previous academic year, she defended her honor’s thesis and passed with distinction. As a student in the Clark Honors College and research assistant in the EDLD lab, she began working on her thesis during her junior year under the mentorship of Dr. Stephanie De Anda. That same year Abbey received the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI) Undergraduate Fellowship to support her research throughout the summer term. Her work continued into her senior year, and on March 5th, 2020 she successfully defended her thesis.

Her project titled “Language Dominance and Lexical-Semantic Processing in Bilingual Toddlers” looked at whether young Spanish-English bilingual children build and organize a language system in which their two vocabulary systems interact with one another. Her study also examined whether language proficiency (i.e., the words a child says) or language exposure (i.e., the words a child hears) was a stronger predictor of this cross-language interaction. Consistent with prior literature, Abbey’s findings suggest that language systems do interact in young bilingual children as early as two years of age. Her results show that proficiency measured by vocabulary size and speed of word recognition either inhibited or facilitated within- and cross-language processing.

Abbey’s thesis was later selected for the Scientific Frontiers Award. This award goes to distinguished theses within the Honors College that demonstrate innovative scientific techniques or novel approaches to solving problems.

The EDLD lab is incredibly proud of all her accomplishments.