Page 129 - Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Proceedings 2017-18

School of Humanities and Social Science
Division of Social Science

Division of Social Science

Examining Cognitive Development through Children's Conversations

Supervisor: CHEN Eva E / SOSC
Student: TAN Jingjing / GCS Course: UROP1100, Fall

Previous research has discovered that children develop awareness of person’s personality at fairly young age. By using
trait terms, on the one hand, preschoolers are able to make inference about themselves or others verbally. On the other
hand, their ability to form impression or make judgment of other people can be observed and investigated by studying
the utterances produced by them. Parent-child verbal exchanges are expected to impose influence of the uses of trait
terms by preschool children. In order to verify the potential impact of that, this study will study transcripts from CHILDES
database of a girl (Sarah) from the age of 2 to 5 with the focuses of 2 trait terms: “good” and “bad”, via applying a 4-
stepped coding strategy. The results showed that parents are more inclined to initiate trait terms in the conversations in
the way that children would learn linguistic terminology from them. However, the extent of influence of parent-child
conversation towards preschoolers’ use of trait terms could not been determined.

Chinese and English Media Representation of Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Supervisor: GROVES Julian M / SOSC
Student: SIU Tsz Chun / GCS Course: UROP2100, Spring

Studies on verbal and visual representation of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong media have been popular since
handover. Some agreed that local media constructing negative images of migrant domestic workers. that racial and
gendered stereotypes of workers were tools of local media marginalizing workers. However, in the wake of Erwiana
physical abuse case in 2014, reportage on migrant workers was expanded to different areas, for example abuse cases,
welfare, rights and misconduct of workers. In this paper, we will conduct content analysis of news articles and videos.
This aims to show the association between reporting perspectives and readership. Also, we will provide with reasons for
the difference in reportage between Chinese and English media.

Economic Development, Pollution and Health in China

Supervisor: HE Guojun / SOSC
Student: LU Wenxin / BTGBM Course: UROP1100, Spring
UROP2100, Summer

Past researches have shown the possibility of using the night light luminosity data measured from satellites as a proxy
for economic and socioeconomic statistics such as gross domestic product (GDP). This proxy is particularly useful for
developing countries with low political transparency and poor measurements. This report investigates the correlation
between nightlight luminosity and socioeconomic statistics in China from 1998 to 2008. It also generates a framework
that can be used to predict GDP level with nightlight.

Supervisor: HE Guojun / SOSC
Student: ZHANG Yifan / FINA Course: UROP1100, Fall
UROP2100, Spring

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