USC Union PALM Psych Lab

Keep an eye out for an upcoming article in Carolina CrossTalk by the PALM Lab's own, Caden Jackson, who just graduated with his B.A. in Liberal Studies and Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Diversity and Social Advocacy. His article describes his research journey, including in the PALM Lab on the USC Union campus. He also wraps up his run as the first non-Columbia-based Magellan Ambassador on behalf of Columbia's Office of Undergraduate Research. Also, congrats to Caden on his most recent accolades, earning an Outstanding Senior Award and a President's Award at the annual Awards Day ceremony on the Columbia campus!

Special shout out to PALM Lab student researcher, Jessica Dawkins! Over the past year, starting with some PURE Grant work last summer (2022) to work through the literature and finalize preparations for the experiment, and wrapping up the school year with a Spring independent study to finish collecting the data and preparing it for dissemination. Great work in April in sharing that work in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA), and at the annual Discover USC event on the USC Columbia campus!

Great job by Caden Jackson presenting our research today, representing the PALM Lab at Discover USC!!!

Great job today by Caden Jackson presenting some of our research at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association!

Union, Its Time We Talk (Education) The panel is joined by USC-Union interim dean Dr. Randy Lowell and Spartanburg Community College-Union Campus Director Isaac McKissick as they discuss the education, Grown of USC Union, college educat

Today, Dr. Emily Lowell, psychologist and faculty with UofSC School of Medicine, discusses the intersection of research and clinical practice. This includes discussions of the scientist-practitioner model, evidence-based practice, program evaluation, and direct participation in research.

Check out the presentation on our YouTube channel (link in the bio) or click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTPyNaqK280

International Literacy Association Hub The authors examined the influence of context meaning consistency on incidental vocabulary acquisition during reading. Context meaning consistency refers to informational context that reflected the s...

Randy Lowell, Kaitlyn Pender, and Katherine Binder describe their experimental study into incidental vocabulary learning in their article, "Impact of Informative Context’s Meaning Consistency During Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition." They examine whether adults better process and remember unfamiliar words when they read them multiple times, and if those repeated encounters are in similar or different contexts (i.e. if the words mean the same thing in both sentences). The researchers find:

"Based on the results reported [in this article], context meaning consistency has an impact on the acquisition process during reading and on the nature of memory representations for novel words following those encounters in context" (p. 689).

This conclusion has many actionable implications for teachers, policy makers, and curriculum developers. See a few here, and then read the whole piece in :
https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rrq.295

To see more of Lowell's research, check out his lab at .PALM.PsycLab

In their article, "Impact of Informative Context’s Meaning Consistency During Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition," Randy Lowell, Kaitlyn Wade Pender, and Katherine S. Binder summarize their findings:

"Consistently providing the same meaning for a new word over the course of repeated exposures, using different wording in the context each time, seems to provide a particularly strong foundation for developing a representation for the new word in our lexicon" (p. 693).

This result raises questions and implications for literacy researchers and educators in higher and continuing ed, as well as K-12. Let us know what you think of the questions here, or any others this piece raises for you!

Find the article in :
https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rrq.295

To see more of Lowell's research, check out his lab at .PALM.PsycLab