Lab Affiliation: Bilingualism, Mind and Brain Lab; HABLA Lab
Research Interests: bilingualism, bidialectalism, education, heritage language, quantitative methods
I am a postdoctoral fellow at UC, Irvine working with Drs. Judith Kroll and Elizabeth Peña, as well as a visiting fellow at Harvard University. My work is currently being supported by a NIH-NIDCD training grant to the Center for Hearing Research at UCI. My research takes a interdisciplinary approach across education, psychology and cognitive neuroscience to understand how early bilingual and bidialectal language experience shape later language and literacy development.
My doctoral dissertation explored how crosslinguistic skills in Spanish and English support bilingual middle school students’ comprehension of STEM lessons and texts. I used behavioral, eye tracking and neuroimaging (fMRI and EEG) measures to index both overt language performance and underlying neural processing. I am also interested in understanding the developmental trajectory of bidialectalism and educational supports for successful bidialectalism.
I received my B.A. from Stanford University and Master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard University. I have extensive teaching experience in the K-12 classroom and in teacher training in the Northern Mariana Islands. Courses I have taught or supported include graduate classes in early literacy methods, reading development, typical & atypical development, bilingualism, educational neuroscience, and quantitative methods.
Looking for: If you are an undergraduate interested in languages and/or dialects and in getting some hands-on laboratory experience (virtually for now), please get in touch! I am especially committed to supporting 1st Generation and BIPOC students who want to get involved with our lab and are seeking research opportunities.
Contact information:
Social Science Tower 466
University of California, Irvine
sibylla.leonguerrero (at) uci.edu