Jimmy Tong
Graduate Student
Brain, Behavior & Cognition

TEACHING:
I am TFing for PS323 (Experimental Psych - Learning) at BU in the fall. I also work as an adjunct lecturer at UMass Boston and will be teaching Psych 201 (Research Methods).

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
bilingualism, language acquisition (early and adult), affective processing, and autism

If you are interested in being a research assistant, please contact me or Professor Catherine Caldwell-Harris.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Emotions and Language Acquisition (Dissertation)

My dissertation topic explores the role of socio-emotional factors in adult language acquisition. I am comparing and contrasting the differences between early and late language acquisition and testing the efficacy of specialized language input in a variety of learning conditions including live, video, and virtual.

Putting Feelings Into (Two) Words

This project compares English monolinguals to Spanish-English bilinguals in an affect labeling task. Participants will view images of emotional faces and will be asked to label them with either emotion terms or common English/Spanish names while we monitor heart rate and SCRs. More details will be posted once data collection is complete.

You are eligible for this study if you are either (a) a native speaker of English only and have taken some Spanish (minimum 1 semester) or (b) a native speaker of English and Spanish. If you are interested in being a participant, please look for our sign-up sheet on the bulletin board in the Psychology building (experiment 922) or contact me.

Bilingual-Bicultural Emotionality Scale (BBES)

The BBES is a scale designed to measure level of emotionality and cultural connectedness associated with one language versus another. A preliminary factor analysis yielded five components: (1) preference for emotional language in one language vs. the other, (2) language use in the home, both past and present, (3) preference to socialize with people from a specific culture, (4) language use outside the home, and (5) a miscellaneous category containing idiosyncratic speech acts and preferences. We are currently on version 2 of the scale and are continuing to collect data.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Tong, J., & Caldwell-Harris, C.L. (2007). Bilinguals sweating in the lab: "Stop That" more arousing in L1, "I love you" in L2. Presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomics Society, Long Beach, CA, November 15-18.