A Small Bummer but it’s Alright

Last week, we decided that I will stick with testing Chinese native bilinguals since I still have 10 participants waiting to do the real experiment. However, I wasn't able to do any session last week because I got my wisdom tooth taken off last Friday and hope it got...

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Some updates

For this week, what I did mainly was to pay my participants who either have completed the survey or the experiment session. Some of my participants want Chinese Starbucks gift card and some prefer US Amazon. It's a little messy at first, but I think I am pretty...

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First Session Done!

Yesterday I finished my first session with two Mandarin native bilinguals because I haven't heard from any of the English native ones. Starting with running experiments with them was still workable because we still can collect data about testing bilingual's memory of...

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Some Good News!

In the last few weeks, I have been working hard to try to recruit as many participants as I could. Though recruiting the English native bilinguals was not easy, I have many Mandarin native bilinguals in my bag. Here comes to my first good news, in our last PIRE...

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Slowly progressing

As I read posts by our PIRE fellows, I felt a little behind because I haven't heard from the English native bilinguals who are very essential and crucial for my study. I think we are on our way of finding a way of reaching out to this group of people and we will see...

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When it got started

To be honest, I didn't have experience with lab researching before doing PIRE. I was nervous about what should get done before what, and worried about how to run an experiment by myself. For the last couple of weeks until now, me and my fellows prepared all the sites...

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Week 8: Finished~

This week, there was a last minute problem! I had to share the experiment room with another lab conducting a different experiment. To solve this problem, I ultimately communicated with them and we worked around each other’s schedules. At first, I tried to move the...

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Week 7: Sickness!

This week, I experienced the struggles of having many participants away from the university because it was the start of their summer break (the Beijing Normal University English majors summer vacation started this week)…and some participants I did have cancelled their...

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Week 6: Learning!

Some of my favorite moments this week came from speaking with some of the participants. I love seeing how different participants have different strengths in learning English—some have great vocabulary, some speak so naturally…some want to become translators, some are...

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Week 5: Participants Craze!

This week, I experienced the craze of scheduling participants. There are many China-specific aspects to running experiments with university students…for example, experimenters regularly communicate and pay participants through the popular, all-encompassing social...

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Week 4: Help from across the world!

This week was a great week of working with Katrina to get the project up and running, ready for participants! With her help, we could work past issues such as the computer set up being confusing, and the eye tracker equipment (the mount) being a different type than...

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Week 3: Change

This experience has taught me a lot about resilience and also has taught me a lot about trying to work through the difficulties involved with running an experiment overseas. This is also the last week that Carly, the other PennState student, and Eric, the PennState...

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I've been back in the states for a few days now, and I'm taking some time to reflect on the past 8 weeks I spent in Beijing. The last few weeks went very well as I was able to find the perfect number of individuals interested in participating, and collected the data I...

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Final Days of Testing!!

These past few weeks have gone by so quickly, and during them I was able to make up for the first few weeks, where I was facing some errors with the experiment crashing. I was worried originally that I wouldn't be able to find more participants to test, as the past...

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Week 2: Gratitude

This week has been notable because of how helpful and accomodating the Chinese graduate students in my research lab have been with me. Particularly my friend Lucy has been kind in helping me gather the necessary materials to start my experiment, and with contacting...

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Week 1: Preparation!

This PIRE week, from June 3 to June 7, was a great week! I moved into the housing and the streets were very pretty near my place. I walk the streets to get to the bus stop, and pass by many convenience stores on the way there. At the research laboratory, I have met...

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My Recent Days in Beijing

                    Since the last time I shared a blog (sorry for the delay- was having trouble with internet service!), many events have occurred... Testing has been going well overall, we have figured out a lot about what was going wrong before, and everything is...

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Testing, Exploring, Skating, and More Testing!

So much has happened in these first few weeks here. I've been meaning to post on the blog, and haven't realized how quickly the time has flown! Testing has been going pretty well- I've run into some issues with the experiment related to the computer- it seems the...

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好久不见 (Long Time No See), 中国!

Wow, where to begin... If you had told me a year ago that I would be able to go abroad and conduct research, I would have asked you to not ... I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for about a year and a half now, and when I began to learn, the thought only briefly...

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Three weeks down!

by Nicholas Adam Anderegg So among other things that have happened in the past two weeks, I've learned that I'm really bad at updating blogs and I think that's just a fact of life that we're all going to have to accept! (Seriously, this New Post tab has been open in...

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Arriving in Beijing

by Nicholas Adam Anderegg Arriving in Beijing on Monday was quite a culture shock! Surprisingly, I was not too jet lagged to start with. I think it helps that the time difference between State College and Beijing is exactly 12 hours, and since I didn't get much sleep...

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Off to Beijing

by Nicholas Adam Anderegg My name is Nick Anderegg and I will be heading to Beijing on May 11 as part of the PIRE Fellowship.

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fNIRS

by Thomas Byron Holt As I wrap up my time here in Beijing, one thing I'm disappointed about is that I didn't get a chance to the ERP portion of my study, mainly due to time constraints and the grad students here not being traind in the same program that we use in the...

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Hiking the Great Wall

by Thomas Byron Holt So despite already being in Beijing for several weeks, I hadn't actually been to the Great Wall until last weekend. Part of the reason was that I had been more eager to travel to other parts of China and see other sights in Beijing such as the...

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My Chinese

by Thomas Byron Holt Despite only being in China for less than two months, I'm consistently amazed by how much my Chinese has improved in the little time I've been here. When I first got off the plane, I could barely understand my cab driver as I asked him to take me...

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Week 3

by Thomas Byron Holt It's really hard to believe that I've been doing research for three weeks already and by next week it'll be July. It feels like my time here is going by too fast and makes me here I could stay here longer and keep doing research. My first week...

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Chengdu

by Thomas Byron Holt As I've lived in China these past few weeks, there's two things I've consistently noticed. The first is that my favorite experiences in China haven't been the sights I've seen or the food I've eaten, but the people I've met. Meeting people at the...

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Xi’an

by Thomas Byron Holt I had to chosen to visit Xi'an for several reasons. For one, it's the home of the famous Terracotta Warriors. Secondly, it is one of the Four Ancient Capitals of China and as a history major, I was especially interested in checking out this city....

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中国…How I’ve missed you.

by Thomas Byron Holt So, I'd like to apologize in advance for making my first blog entry so late. It's just that these past few weeks in China have been amazing. This is the beginning of my third week in Beijing doing research, but actually the fifth week I've been in...

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Never a Dull Moment…

by Patrick Joseph Clark Lately, it seems as if the general activity level here in Beijing has increased even further.  The last two weeks have been packed with different tasks, projects, and adventures.  In a true collaborative effort, I have been learning fMRI data...

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by Nicole Paige Wasilus Dr. Michael Ullman from the Department of Neuroscience from Georgetown University visited Beijing Normal University last week. I attended his talk entitled "What Rats can tell us about Language: Contributions of Declarative and Procedural...

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An Exciting Week

by Patrick Joseph Clark The time since my last post has flown by, due in particular to a very busy schedule. On Wednesday of this past week, Ben and I addressed Prof. Shu and a number of her students at the weekly Wednesday seminar here in "The Little Red Building"...

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New Challenges

by Nicole Paige Wasilus Being surrounded by graduate students has allowed me to "play up a level". Although I am still an undergraduate, this program has thrown me into the graduate level world. It feels great to be taking on more responsibility. At Penn State, I gave...

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Chinese Culture

by Nicole Paige Wasilus It's now week four and I've had a lot of exposure to Chinese culture and everyday life here. I thought I'd make this blog post for the future PIRE student conducting research at Beijing Normal University (BNU). I've noticed many differences and...

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by Patrick Joseph Clark Weekdays here at Beijing Normal University have a fairly consistent pattern - largely filled with doing what I can to adapt my research plans to accommodate another small setback.  Fortunately, with the help of Ben and my new colleagues, I...

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Adjustments

by Nicole Paige Wasilus For my research study at Beijing Normal University (BNU), I am replicating tests of knowledge, language processing, executive function and theory of mind that we have used at Penn State. This requires many more changes than simply translating...

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