iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Our new study shows how educational disruption shapes reading comprehension 📖 When formal literacy instruction is interrupted, kids rely more on language comprehension than decoding. 🧠 Neuroimaging reveals compensatory pathways supporting reading comprehension Check out the preprint: osf.io/m9e3c_v1

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Most children in the Majority World learn to read in a 2nd language, often late. 🇨🇮 Our study in Côte d’Ivoire shows L1 phonological awareness boosts L2 reading—even when children never learn to read in the L1 Implications for global literacy efforts & SDG 4.6. Check out the preprint: 📘 osf.io/5av3y

osf.io

Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Language and Literacy in Côte d'Ivoire

Hosted on the Open Science Framework

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Caregiver stress is linked with internalizing problems in adolescents. BOLD lab students Andrea De Bartolo and Julianna Corbett presenting work from Côte d’Ivoire at the Let’s Talk About Youth conference.

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

📚 New research from rural Côte d’Ivoire: 🔴 Higher maternal stress, anxiety, and food insecurity predict harsh discipline. 🟢 Parents' educational aspirations for children are protective. 🔍 A call for reducing poverty & consequent poor mental health + stress. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Predictors of harsh discipline practices among rural households in Côte d'Ivoire

Harsh discipline is associated with adverse child outcomes across diverse contexts, but research is limited in sub–Saharan Africa. We assess the preva…

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

How does war & displacement shape young minds? 🧠 Our new #fNIRS study on Syrian refugee children resettled in Canada shows that early & prolonged displacement changes brain network organization, potentially affecting long-term cognitive development #Refugees www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Reposted by BOLD Lab @UofT

Kaja Jasińska 🇨🇦 @kajajasinska.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

New preprint: the developmental timing of displacement in refugee children relates to neural network organization. Varied age and duration of displacement were used to examine the timing of adversity. Early and prolonged displacement is linked with reduced small worldness. osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Communities of practice can improve teachers’ professional development. But, infrastructural challenges pose difficulties for in-person connections in rural communities. Check out Vikram Cannanure's work on how social media & chatbots can create virtual communities: dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Mentoring is crucial for teachers' professional development but challenges of access, resources & capacity make it difficult in low-infrastructure contexts. Mobile technologies can scale teacher professional development. Check out Vikram Cannanure's work: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

dl.acm.org

"I believe I did not preach into the desert": Opportunities & Challenges in Scaling Teacher Mentorship through Mobile Technology in Rural Côte d'Ivoire | Proceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on ...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Socioeconomic risk influences cognitive development & learning. Socioeconomic disadvantages and kinship fostering (child in care of extended family while parents pursue economic opportunities) linked with poorer EF and literacy in rural Côte d'Ivoire. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

#fNIRS study of language processing in deaf adults using a cochlear implant: early ASL exposure doesn't disrupt spoken language, but may offset negative effects of language deprivation that deaf children without sign language exposure experience pre-CI. direct.mit.edu/nol/article/...

direct.mit.edu

Impact of ASL Exposure on Spoken Phonemic Discrimination in Adult CI Users: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Abstract. We examined the impact of exposure to a signed language (American Sign Language, or ASL) at different ages on the neural systems that support spoken language phonemic discrimination in deaf ...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

BOLD lab study led by Dr. Shakhlo Nematova shows that phonological similarity between two languages may explain the previously reported bilingual effect in audiovisual speech perception sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Stat learning and reading in Côte d’Ivoire: a very challenging study with many careful experimental iterations to develop a culturally appropriate paradigm. Hats off to Ben Zinszer for realizing this impressive program. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Statistical learning and children's emergent literacy in rural Côte d'Ivoire

Studies of non-linguistic statistical learning (SL) have often linked performance in SL tasks with differences in language outcomes. Most of these studies have focused on Western and high-income edu...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Prioritizing research–policy–community partnerships, promoting complementary research approaches, considering measurement timescales, and capacity exchange approaches are key to large-scale impact evaluations and RCTs in Majority World contexts. Check out our paper: doi.org/10.1037/dev0...

doi.org

APA PsycNet

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

BOLD lab study on statistical learning and emergent literacy in primary school children in Côte d'Ivoire led by Dr. Ben Zinszer highlighting the importance of testing theories in understudied contexts onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

<em>Language Learning</em> | Language Learning Research Club Journal | Wiley Online Library

A one-page Accessible Summary of this article in non-technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis-database.org

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Bilingual education is often linked to (but doesn't guarantee) better learning. BOLD lab study led by Mary Ball identifies implementation & sociocultural factors critical to high-quality effective bilingual programs in Francophone West Africa. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Effective bilingual education in Francophone West Africa: constraints and possibilities

Bilingual education that incorporates a local language alongside the official language has become an increasingly common approach in sub-Saharan Africa for improving literacy rates and learning out...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

In rural Côte d’Ivoire, kids of varying ages learn in the same classroom. Younger vs older readers show different neural activity for phonological processing—neural language & reading networks may depend on the developmental timing of reading instruction. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Neural Activation during Phonological Processing in Primary‐School Children with Limited Reading Experience: Insights from Rural Côte d'Ivoire

We examined neural activation underlying phonological processing (an important predictor and outcome of reading) in children without consistent reading experience as a result of limited access to qua....

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

In Côte d’Ivoire, parental involvement is positively (but parental expectations are negatively) related to children's socioemotional skills. SE skills mediate the link between parent factors and learning outcomes. Led by BOLD's Medha Aurora. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Paper from BOLD's Brooke Wortsman. In Côte d’Ivoire, children who enroll in school late, poor readers📖, & cocoa laborers🍫 are more likely to dropout of primary school. But, quality education is protective against dropout for high risk children. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Good readers are sensitive to statistical regularities between print and sound. Not in low-literacy contexts: good readers leverage semantic regularities to read instead. Implications for statistical learning theories of reading? Check out our paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Individual Differences in Leveraging Regularity in Emergent L2 Readers in Rural Côte d’Ivoire

Statistical learning (SL) approaches to reading maintain that proficient reading requires assimilation of the rich statistical regularities in the writing system. Reading skills in developing first...

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 29/08/2022

New publication on bilingual children’s language skills in four Ivorian languages and French. Our Ivorian language assessment toolkit is available for anyone interested. t.co/cpfKf2yZQo

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 20/10/2021

Check out our latest work on quality education and children’s work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire t.co/yApZedWFzY

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 14/02/2021

🚨Postdoc position in education and developmental cognitive neuroscience🚨 Join our research team at @APHDatOISE at the University of Toronto. Come work on exciting #fNIRS #neuroimaging studies of child development and learning in Côte d'Ivoire t.co/ahjs3kW9fo t.co/ncZY01knGH

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 10/10/2020

BOLD Lab is on the move! 🚛🇨🇦🏠Our new home is the University of Toronto! t.co/7YYSaNAhmq

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BOLD Lab @UofT @bold-lab.bsky.social · 06/03/2020

We are so glad that we got the opportunity to host Bradley White from @GallaudetU for his presentation on "Listening Effort and Neurocognitive plasticity in Hearing Aid and Cochlear Implant Users". We had a blast and learned a lot! @BL2Neuro @VL2Science t.co/jnqz1dNRtH

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