Bilingual Learning Lab

🎉Are you curious about how your child learns languages?
🔎We are recruiting children ages 2-8 for our language research studies! We are inviting children who are monolingual or bilingual to participate.

🎁Families may receive up to a $100 in gift cards for participation! These studies can be completed online or in-person at Boston University.

💭Interested families can sign up at https://sites.bu.edu/crespolab/contact-us-2/contact-us/!

Participant Interest Form | Bilingual Learning Lab Participant Interest Form Interested in learning more about our studies? Want to participate? Fill out the form below and we will contact you! ¿Interesado en aprender más sobre nuestros estudios? ¿Quieres participar? ¡Rellena el formulario a continuación y nos pondremos en contacto contigo! 感...

✨BLL END OF YEAR CELEBRATION✨

Yesterday the Bilingual Learning Lab members got together to recap the successful year we had. We got to celebrate everyone’s hard work and wonderful achievements. We also got to share heartfelt gratitude for our graduating students, who we will miss dearly. We wish them the best in all their future endeavors! 🎊🎓

Our work would not be possible without our amazing team! And so a huge thank you to them, as well as our wonderful participants! 🫂

We are thrilled to share Estefanía passed her MS-SLP thesis defense 🎊👏🏼

Estefanía investigated the effects of dual-language input and language ability on word learning via bilingual storybooks. Her findings demonstrated that children are able to learn from code-switched input, and code-switching may support learning more than translated input, particularly for children with lower language skills. This highlights the need for more mixed-language resources for bilingual children. 👧🏽🧒🏻📚

Thank you to Estefanía‘s thesis committee members and the Bilingual Learning Lab for their support. ✨

✨Integrated Brain Sciences and Engineering Undergraduate Symposium Spotlight✨

Yesterday our undergraduate RA, Melanie Criollo-Landi, presented a poster on The Effects of Semantic Density and Bilingualism on Children’s Statistical Learning. Her findings revealed that existing semantic knowledge has a significant effect on children’s word learning, over and above dual language exposure. 📚🦋🔨

We are incredibly proud of Melanie. 🎊

We are thrilled to share that Justina Wang is a Summer ‘26 UROP recipient! ✨

Justina is an undergraduate research assistant in our lab. Under the mentorship of doctoral students and Dr. Crespo, Justina will conduct a study to investigate the effects of social-pragmatic cues, such as eye gaze and joint attention, on children’s statistical word learning. 📚👦🏻👧🏽

Congratulations Justina! 🎊

We are so proud of Mia for passing her MS-SLP thesis! ✨🎊👏🏼

Mia’s thesis was on the interactive effects of semantic category density and bilingualism on children’s cross-situational word learning. Her findings revealed that semantic density differentially impacts word learning in ambiguous contexts such as CSWL. While bilingualism did not impact learning broadly, English exposure gated the extent to which category structure influenced word learning. These results highlight the need to consider individual differences within bilingual children’s language experiences when targeting word learning, and lexical-semantic interventions. 🧠🥼

Thank you to Mia’s thesis committee and to the Bilingual Learning Lab for their support. 🫂

Have you ever wondered how your child can learn multiple languages? Join us for an online study at the Boston University Bilingual Learning Lab! We are currently recruiting families with children ages 4-6 years old who are learning English and Spanish. Families can earn up to $100 in gift cards as a thank-you for participating. Sign up at https://sites.bu.edu/crespolab/contact-us-2/contact-us/!

¿Alguna vez te has preguntado cómo tu hijo puede aprender varios idiomas? ¡Únete a nosotros en un estudio online del Laboratorio de Aprendizaje Bilingüe de la Universidad de Boston! Estamos buscando familias con niños de entre 4 y 6 años que estén aprendiendo inglés y español. Las familias pueden ganar hasta $100 en tarjetas de regalo como agradecimiento por su participación. ¡Inscríbete aqui en https://sites.bu.edu/crespolab/contact-us-2/contact-us/!

Have you ever wondered how your child can learn multiple languages? Join us for a study at the Boston University Bilingual Learning Lab! We are currently recruiting families with toddlers ages 24- to 36-months who are learning English or English and Spanish. Families can earn up to $100 in gift cards as a thank-you for participating. Sign up at https://sites.bu.edu/crespolab/contact-us-2/contact-us/!

¿Alguna vez te has preguntado cómo tu hijo puede aprender varios idiomas? ¡Únete a nosotros en un estudio en el Laboratorio de Aprendizaje Bilingüe de la Universidad de Boston! Estamos buscando familias con niños pequeños de entre 24 y 36 meses que estén aprendiendo inglés o inglés y español. Las familias pueden ganar hasta $100 en tarjetas de regalo como agradecimiento por su participación. ¡Inscríbete aqui en https://sites.bu.edu/crespolab/contact-us-2/contact-us/!

Thrilled to share that the Bilingual Learning Lab is presenting at Boston University’s Research on Tap—as part of the Language and Being Human series ✨🧠

We’ll be talking about how children learn from bilingual input across a wide range of language abilities—what experience changes, what ability predicts, and what this means for how we think about language development.

Join us for an evening of data and a little healthy myth-busting.

✨ Wrapping up the Fall 2025 Semester ✨

Here’s a recap of the highlights:

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Our dedicated team of students came together to reflect on our accomplishments this year, including conference presentations, awarded grants and project progress. It was also a semester of growth as we welcomed a new Postdoctoral fellow, a new PhD student and many Master’s and undergraduate research assistants.

🌟 We celebrated the contributions and achievements of each member! Without the commitment and dedicated hard-work of each lab member, none of our research would be possible!

🤗 We are incredibly grateful for our team and the families that participate in our studies.

A very happy holiday to everyone! ✨