Ohio State Marion Professor of Psychology, Nikole Patson led a language science session on Wednesday, October 15 with area teens as part of a new partnership with the Marion Family YMCA Teen Rec Center.
The goal of the new partnership is to introduce teens to science majors/careers they can pursue at The Ohio State University and get them excited about science in general.
During the session, teens discussed their own experiences with language, learned about careers in linguistics and language science, and learned about how language works in the brain. Although the rec center is open to middle and high school students, the session was attended by middle school students.
“I always enjoy helping kids realize how much they really know about language and the cool ways we can use language to ‘trick’ our brains, said Patson.
“The kids were given a copy of the book ‘Highly Irregular’ by Arika Okrent so that they could learn more on their own,” she added.
“Dr. Patson showed how our brains react when words surprise us — hearing ‘I stirred my tea with a sock’ instead of ‘with a spoon’ creates a totally different brainwave pattern. But sometimes our brains don’t even notice the mistake. If there’s a picture of a pig on the screen, we might not realize anything’s wrong with the sentence ‘Goldilocks was scared away by the three pigs,’ said Tiffiny Rye-McCurdy, coordinator for the new partnership and manager of the Academic Success Center at Ohio State Marion.
Spring semester, Ohio State Marion will offer three additional workshops on biology, engineering, and physics led by Dr. Susan Gershman, Dr. Qudsia Tahmina, and Dr. Chris Orban.