Research at the CYC

A CYC Mission

Research is one part of the CYC's three-fold mission, and parents enroll their children in the school with an understanding that they will be asked to participate in center-approved research studies throughout the school year. Such studies increase information about how children learn and develop. Many studies are observational in nature and do not require the child to leave the classroom, while other studies require individual children's participation, usually outside the classroom. Parents must approve their child's involvement in such studies.

Current Research

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park has conducted research at the Center for Young Children for many years.  Currently led by Dr. Jeffrey Lidz and Dr. Andrea Zukowski, who have been studying language acquisition for over ten years, the research focuses on how children learn the structure of sentences in their language (syntax) and how sentence structure relates to meaning (semantics).  An important component of this research involves the comparison of children learning a wide range of languages, including French, Hindi, Kannada, Korean, Japanese, Malayalam, Mandarin and Russian, as well as comparisons between normal and abnormal development.

How to Schedule Research

If you are interested in scheduling research or observation time at the CYC, please contact Dr. Fran Favretto, the CYC Director, at , for guidelines and application.