Last week n Nijmegen 🙁

After long days of travel and trying to get over the jet-lag, I can officially say that I am back home and settled in after my trip. As good as it feels to be home, I must say that I really do miss Nijmegen. I had an incredible experience during my time abroad, and I...

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Seventh week in Nijmegen!

I can't believe I am only here for one more week! Last week was a little slow with participants, but this week we had three pairs! Everything went smoothly and we have reached our (new) goal of participants. We wrapped up our last pair today, and are going to campus...

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Week 7: Nijmegen

With only one more week left of this program, my research partners who arrived earlier have settled back into their homes. This past week we had three pairs of participants come in for our study! Most of the study ran smoothly. The most recent run was a bit rough. We...

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Sixth week in Nijmegen!

I had a great sixth week in Nijmegen and the time is flying by! This week, we ran several pairs of participants and are getting closer and closer to our goal. We also have two pairs planned for next week, which will bring us to our goal. After running our participants...

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Week 6: Nijmegen

It is already week 6. Every week, I feel as though the days go by quickly. I wake up and then it's already dark outside. Now, the past 6 weeks went by in a blink of an eye. We ran our 10th pair yesterday. We had a final group lunch with our supervisor as well....

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Week 7 in Nijmegen!

My weeks here are starting to wind down, but the adventures continue! We were able to run a bunch of participants last week, and as of right now we have enough sign-ups to get us to 31 participants! We are hoping to get a few more if we can as the week goes on, but at...

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Fifth week in Nijmegen!

I cannot believe the fifth week in Nijmegen has already passed! This week, we had a relatively busy week with running participants. We were worried that people would not sign up due to finals week, but we have had great luck with participation that is bringing us...

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Week 5: Nijmegen

Today marks the end of week 5 in Nijmegen. It's crazy how quickly time has been passing. I feel as though it was only yesterday since I wrote the last blog. During this past week, we continued to run our experiment. Although we didn't have many pairs come in before,...

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Week 6 in Nijmegen!

I cannot believe that I am already six weeks into this trip; time really does fly! Research has been going great. We had five participants last week and we have six more scheduled for this week. We are hoping to get six more participants total between the rest of this...

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Fourth week in Nijmegen!

I can't believe I am already halfway through my PIRE experience! I have had an amazing time in the Netherlands and I am not quite ready to go home yet! Because of finals week at Radboud, we were not able to run any participants this week. We have 3 pairs scheduled for...

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Week 4: Nijmegen

Already halfway into this program, my research partners and I ran a total of 6 pairs of participants. Recruitment has been difficult, but we have three more pairs coming in next week. When we don't have participants, we transcribe the data we collected and try to...

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Week 5 in Nijmegen!

As classes are coming to a close at our University, volunteers for our study increased this week! We had five participants for this past week, and no no-shows! However, now the students are going into their finals weeks, so I am not sure how willing they will be to...

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Week 4 in Nijmegen!

These past few weeks have been pretty busy, but in a great way! We have had a lot more participants sign up for these upcoming weeks, so we are looking forward to keep running sessions. Also, ever since that first week, there have been no issues regarding technical...

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Week 3: Nijmegen

The 3rd week flew by real fast. It feels like only yesterday when I wrote the last blog post. Although it took some time, I feel as though I have integrated myself into the Dutch lifestyle (at least in terms of walking around and being used to the sites). The travel...

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Third week in Nijmegen!

I had a great third week here in Nijmegen! I have been busy transcribing the files we have gathered so far and going around campus to recruit potential participants. So far, data collection has been a little slow with finals week coming up, but we have some pairs...

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Second week in Nijmegen!

I have had an amazing and exciting second week in Nijmegen! After running participants scattered throughout the week, we have been able to start transcribing the recordings. There are a lot of factors to pay attention to (like code-switching and filled pauses), but...

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Week 2: Nijmegen

Today marks the 2nd week of our PIRE trip. It feels like it's been longer than two considering how quickly time passes. With the other researchers, we continued to hand out fliers and promote our study. After we passed some fliers, we worked on managing the data we...

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Week 3 in Nijmegen!

First off, I cannot believe that 3 weeks have already gone by! My trip so far has been such an incredible experience, and I cannot wait to see what the rest of my weeks here have in store. This past week was pretty busy as we have been getting a good amount of...

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First Week in Nijmegen

We just finished our first great week in Nijmegen! After some flight complications due to delays and missed flights, we arrived in Nijmegen last Wednesday. After catching our breath and settling into our Airbnb, we met up with the other researchers who arrived a week...

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Week 1: Nijmegen

Starting a little later than other researchers, we arrived last Wednesday (5/17). The travel to the Netherlands was a bit of a roller coaster ride. Our first flight got delayed and caused us to miss our connecting flight. We had to do a last minute layover in London...

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Week 2 in Nijmegen!

As we finish up week 2 of our travels, we are definitely getting more settled in the area! The other two researchers on our trip also arrived this week, so we have been showing them around to some of our favorite spots! We also lucked out this week because there were...

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First Week in Nijmegen!

Getting settled in the Netherlands was a bit of an adventure for the first few days. The flights and layovers went well, but figuring out the train system once we got here was a little bit complicated. However, once we got to our homes and settled in, we went out for...

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Week 8– Goodbyes

Hi there! This is my final week in Nijmegen and it's all feeling a bit surreal. I am having my final in-person meeting with my mentor and saying goodbye to this wonderful city. Both the city and my mentor have inspired growth within me; it is hard to leave this phase...

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Week 7– Finishing up

Hello, again. With my time in the Netherlands wrapping up, work progress has slowed. It is evident that our project will not be ready to run by the end of our time here. Therefore, these last few weeks will be dedicated to collecting data from our pretest and working...

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Week 7: Nijmegen

Hi everyone! Wow, week 7! It's been great to read about everyone's successful data collection. Due to a number of setbacks, Amira and I won't be at that point for some time yet, but we plan to be in the next few months. We certainly have had no problem keeping busy...

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Week 6– Project Presentation and Prescreening

Hello 🙂 I hope you've had a nice week. My research partner and I had the wonderful opportunity to present our research question and study design at the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics this week. We presented our project ideas to the Communicative Minds group...

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Week 6: Nijmegen

Hello all! It has been great to read about each project's progress and how everyone has been overcoming the obstacles presented to them. Part of the commotion of the past few weeks has been our decision to include a pre-test to identify what specific volume our test...

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Week 5: Nijmegen

This week was one of our busiest yet! As Amira mentioned in her post, we've reached some setbacks in uploading our experiment. It's been a lesson in patience, understanding the process, and adapting to unforeseen obstacles. I wanted to share about the highlight of the...

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Week 5–Project Progression

This week, my research partner and I were excited to move on to the next step of our experiment-- finally creating our study online in LabVanced. However, as we have been learning more about the research process, we found that setbacks are common. Our current setback...

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Week 4: Nijmegen

Amira and I are halfway through our PIRE experience! Time has flown by and I cannot comprehend that we only have 4 weeks left in the Netherlands. My mother visited me this week, which was lovely. She stayed in a beautiful hotel outside the city, which I do envy a bit....

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Nijmegen Week 4– Halfway Mark

Hello 🙂 I hope you had a good week. Today, I am going to share with you what I have been up to this week and recap what I have done up until this point. I will also be sharing what I hope to accomplish with the rest of my time here in the Netherlands. It is so...

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Week 3: Nijmegen

Hello, everyone! It's been enjoyable to keep up with all of your experiences. I appreciate that while we're all spread across the world, we have a cohort here. With three weeks down, I feel like I've settled into a routine with a balance of productivity and rest....

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Week 3– Professional Development

Good afternoon from Nijmegen! I am currently wrapping up work for the week. Winding down after 5 days of work feels great and these blogs are an enjoyable and relaxing way for me to transition into the weekend. Today concluded the IMPRS (International Max Plank...

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Nijmegen, Netherlands–Week 2

Hello! Wherever you are right now, whatever you have done today, I appreciate that you are taking the time to read a bit about me. Currently, I am in my hotel room in Nijmegen relaxing after a short (but exhausting) work week. I will not be working today or tomorrow...

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Week 2: Nijmegen

This past week was productive and busy, despite the fact that we had two days off for a local holiday on Thursday and Friday. We had another meeting with Susanne and began with creating our background and target stimuli for our experiment. Our advisor from home, Navin...

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Week 1: Nijmegen

Hi Everyone, For those who do not know me, my name is Amanda Gryskevicz, and my research partner Amira El-Dinary and I are in the Netherlands. We are stationed at Radboud University in Nijmegen. It has been a bit of a blur since we arrived on Monday morning, but it...

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Day 1– Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Today was my first full day in Nijmegen, and I am amazed. The city is beautiful, filled with greenery, and the people are very welcoming. I was surprised by the hotel's hospitality. Everyone seems so happy here (even while working). This morning, I went to Radboud...

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Summer 2021 Post 7

The experiment is ready! I am extremely happy to say that I believe that there are no more required changes to my experiment in LabVanced. The only thing I have left to do is to make sure data is recording properly and to get the proper licensing to test participants....

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PIRE Summer 2021 Post 6

At this point, the experiment has been programmed through Labvanced and it's more or less ready for the participants! I am in the process of doing some running the test just to see if problems come up, and so far it does everything we want it to. There are just a few...

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PIRE Summer 2021 Post 5

More good news! We are currently in the process of troubleshooting and fixing small bugs in the LabVanced program which will be used for my experiment. Despite these bugs, my experiment is basically ready to go. These issues should be fixed within a couple of days. I...

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PIRE Summer 2021 Post 4

I am very happy to announce that tomorrow my experiment through LabVanced will be complete! The final audio recordings were finished this past week and our experiment is just about set up. I will be able to begin testing participants on Monday. I am very excited and...

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PIRE Summer 2021 Post 3

This week has been a little bit frustrating. I know it’s been basically a year and a half at this point, however I still find the nature of remote work somewhat challenging when it comes to coordination and efficacy regarding getting things done. It is hard to be...

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PIRE 2021 for the week of July 10th

My project, while still moving unfortunately slowly, is chugging along. The final recordings for my experiment should be finished up this week, and therefore we'll be able to finish setting up the experiment very shortly and start collecting data. Recruitment is still...

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PIRE Summer 2021

This summer’s PIRE project has been an adventure. Doing this sort of research remotely is certainly a challenge, however I and those working close with me have been finding ways to persevere through these struggles. Despite several setbacks and some stagnation, I was...

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Newfound Motivation

I made a considerable amount of progress this week. I finally finished trimming the sentences for the main experiment and now I’m working on programming the task in Gorilla. I did a lot of work in Gorilla when I was programming the norming study, so this time around I...

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Week 8: The End?

PIRE Summer 2020 might be coming to a close, but as my advisor tells me, nothing ever really ends. I am so happy with our progress this summer and I feel like I have learned so much more than I expected to. It has been 8 weeks of priceless experience that I will take...

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Week 7: Thankful

Once again, I am ending the week with a nice pile of data from another successful run of the experiment. This time, we added a few more filters to make sure we were only running participants whose data could help answer our research question. No more false...

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Patience and Making Decisions

This week I’ve been working on trimming the silences from the recordings of our sentences and normalizing them for intensity. This has taken a bit longer than I anticipated, but it is still progress nonetheless. At first, I was frustrated by how long it’s been taking...

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Week 6: Ones and Zeroes

For me, Week 6 looked a lot like a scene from a movie: rapid typing, mouse clicking, and a seemingly endless stream of 1's and 0's. We really dug into scoring the data from our first round of participants and I learned how to use all the cool mathematical functions in...

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Finished with Norming!

This week we finally got our norming study up and running! Organizing all of the details for this and working on editing the stimuli has been a work in progress for a while now, and it feels great to finally have it all complete. One thing that surprised me this week...

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