Language, Experience, and Development (LEAD) Lab
Participate in a Study!
Thank you for your interest in LEAD lab studies! Our research depends on caregivers, families, and educators like you helping to advance science, so that we can use that science to help children grow, learn, and LEAD our world.
We are currently recruiting for PLANES (Preschool Language and Neural Engagement Study). Click on our tabs below to learn more!
If you want to learn more, please email leadlab@umd.edu, or fill out this short eligibility survey, and someone from our team will be in touch soon!
PLANES (Preschool Language and Neural Engagement Study) is a study for 3- and 4-year-old children that investigates how children’s early experiences influence their learning and brain development. Participation involves fun, kid-friendly brain imaging sessions at our lab on the UMD College Park campus and an easy home audio recording. Participants will earn up to $230 for completing the study, your child will get a picture of their brain to take home, and they will get to learn about neuroscience!
Please fill out our eligibility screener to express interest in participating: https://umdsurvey.umd.edu/jfe/form/SV_6y5UghSh2klhk2O. You can reach out to our lab email leadlab@umd.edu to ask any questions. Someone from our team will be in touch soon!
You can learn more about PLANES by reading our flyer below or watching our
The LEAD Lab has a community-engaged research project in partnership with the Maryland State Library Association, specifically working with the 'Mother Goose on the Loose: Hatchlings' program designed for expectant parents and parents of newborns.
The Hatchlings program consists of classes in libraries for parents of newborns to emphasise talking, reading & singing to their babies. The Hatchlings program is specifically intended to support under-resourced families, empowering caregivers to raise self-assured, enthusiastic learners by creating a solid foundation at infancy.
The LEAD Lab's research project aims to culturally adapt and evaluate the Hatchling's curriculum by working with various racial, ethnic and linguistic communities to make the program as beneficial as possible for all families. We are also creating a ‘how-to’ guide for other libraries across the country to share the Hatchlings program nationwide.
The LEAD Lab has a developed a collaborative research partnership with Judy Centers across Maryland, creating JUMP (Judy Center – University of Maryland Partnership).
Judy Centers are a resource hub to help all Maryland kids arrive on their 1st day of kindergarten ready to succeed. They bring together and support services, identify areas of need in the community, and offer programs to support children's school readiness.
JUMP is a community-engaged research project which aims to find out how Judy Centers can be adapted to be as useful and supportive as possible for families and family service providers. We are doing this by conducting focus groups and interviews with caregivers and service providers to gain their important insights.
Our Family Inspired Neural Synchrony (FINS) project is exploring if children’s brains “synchronize” with a caregiver’s brain to support development.
While wearing an fNIRS cap each (a special hat that measures brain activity using near-infrared light) a child and their caregiver played, completed puzzles and talked together. Data was collected in preschools to make taking part in the research project as easy and comfortable as possible for families.
We are now coding videos of children and their caregivers playing together to link these coded behavioral variables (including emotion variables, caregiver sensitivity, and conversational turns) to brain signals.
The LEAD Lab had our own "Language Science Station (‘Light Up Your Language Brain’)" at the Planet Word Museum in Washington, D.C. to conduct interactive experiments with the museum’s visitors.
Any visitors who wanted to participate would wear an fNIRS cap while listening to a story in one ear, then different stories in each ear, then a story played backwards, to see how different parts of the brain react to processing language. Our pop-up station also allowed us to communicate and share all things language science to museum visitors!
Dr. Magnuson has excitingly joined the LEAD Lab and is beginning data collection for her new project later on in 2026! She will be using 'in the moment' assessments of caregiver stress, as well as home LENA audio recordings, to:
(1) Characterize the frequency, variability, and source of real-time caregiver stress
(2) Determine how momentary ratings of caregiver stress relate to momentary fluctuations in conversational interactions with children, and
(3) Examine how caregiver stress and language interactions relate to children’s language development and school readiness
The LEAD Lab's Principal Investigator, Dr. Rachel Romeo, was recently awarded the Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship!
This fellowship will support new research on how children learn in real classroom settings and how teachers can better support every student from preschool age. Using fNIRS, we will measure brain-to-brain synchrony between Kindergarteners and their teacher to examine the neural mechanisms underlying vocabulary learning ads a lesson unfolds.
We aim to turn these findings into practical strategies that help make learning more effective and equitable for all children.