Rain Bosworth Headshot

Rain Bosworth

Associate Professor

Department of Liberal Studies
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
rain.bosworth@rit.edu
Office Location
LBJ-2257

Rain Bosworth

Associate Professor

Department of Liberal Studies
National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Bio

Rain Bosworth Bio video

Video Bio

Dr. Rain Bosworth is an associate professor in Department of Liberal Studies at RIT/NTID.  She is a deaf experimental psychologist, studying development of perception and language in infants and children at the newly-founded Perception, Language and Attention in Youth (PLAY) Lab. For her doctoral degree at the University of California, San Diego, she studied visual motion processing and attention in deaf adults, to better understand how deafness and sign language experience impact perceptual abilities. She is currently investigating visual and tactile exploratory behaviors in infants, children and adults to address questions about how we learn and process sign language.  She has also studied how easily visual abilities are recovered in children who were treated for congenital eye disorders. Together, these lines of research reveal how early sensory input shapes perception, cognition, and language processing.  Dr. Bosworth teaches Intro to Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Biopsychology, and Research Methods.

Her video bio can be viewed here.  

More information on how parents can enroll in her Exploratory Behaviors Museum Study at the Strong Museum of Play can be found here. 

I am currently recruiting a postdoctoral fellow and graduate students for the new RIT Cognitive Science program. 

rain.bosworth@rit.edu
Personal Links
Personal Website
ORCID
Curriculum Vitae
Google Scholar
Twitter
Areas of Expertise
Eyetracking
Visual Perception
Infant Vision
Developmental Psychology

Select Scholarship

Peer Reviewed/Juried Poster Presentation or Conference Paper
J., Palagano,, et al. "Effects of Sign Language Experience on Attention to Dynamics Elements in Digital-Multimodal Storybooks." Proceedings of the Society for Research in Child Development. Ed. NA. Minneapolis, Minnesota: n.p..
M., Kihntopf, and Bosworth, R.G. "Are Parent Beliefs About Play Modulated By Parental or Child Hearing Disability Status?" Proceedings of the Society for Research in Child Development. Ed. NA. Minneapolis, Minnesota: n.p..
Z., Sehyr,, et al. "Listening-Related Fatigue and Communication in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Bimodal Bilinguals." Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Ed. NA. San Sebastian, Spain: NA.
N., Taboada,, Fitch, A., and Bosworth, R.G. "Examining Children’s Intuitive Understanding of Mechanical Systems with a Gears Task." Proceedings of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society. Ed. NA. Washington, D.C., USA: n.p..
S., Tellander,, Fitch, A., and Bosworth, R.G. "Deaf preschoolers’ dyadic and multiparty conversational turn-taking interactions." Proceedings of the Society for Research in Child Development. Ed. NA. Minneapolis, Minnesota: n.p..
R.G., Bosworth, and Fitch, A. "Deaf Children’s Exploratory Behaviors and Caregiver Guidance during Play in the Preschool Classroom and Museum." Proceedings of the International Congress on Education of the Deaf. Ed. NA. Rome, Italy: n.p..
Marin, Andrew, Karen R. Dobkins, and Rain G. Bosworth. "Development of Face Discrimination in Infancy: An Eye Tracking Study." Proceedings of the Vision Science Society. Ed. VSS. St. Pete Beach, Florida: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2750376.
Stone, Adam and Rain G. Bosworth. "Where do the eyes look during sign-watching? The impact of early language experience on babies’ and children’s eye gaze behavior for signed narratives." Proceedings of the International Conference on Sign Language Acquisition. Ed. ICSLA. Istanbul, Turkey: n.p..
Tyler, Sarah C., Rain G. Bosworth, and Karen R. Dobkins. "Development of temporal order attention in children 6-36 months old." Proceedings of the Society for Research in Child Development. Ed. SRCD. Austin, Texas: n.p..
Invited Keynote/Presentation
R.G., Bosworth,. "Children’s Play Behaviors and Parent Beliefs about Play." 6th International Conference on Family-centered Early Intervention Congress. FCEI. Bad Ischl, Austria. 17 May 2024. Keynote Speech.
Bosworth, Rain G. "Plasticity in a language-ready brain: complementary evidence from developmental deafness, blindness, and varied language experience across modalities." Society for Neurobiology of Language. Society for Neurobiology of Language. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 6 Oct. 2022. Conference Presentation.
Journal Paper
Bosworth, Rain G, So-One Hwang, and David Corina. "Visual attention for linguistic and non-linguistic body actions in non-signing and native signing children." Frontiers in Psychology 9. (2022): 951057. Print.
Bosworth, Rain G. and Adam Stone. "Rapid development of perceptual gaze control in hearing native signing Infants and children." Developmental Science e13086. (2021): 1-17. Web.
Bosworth, Rain G., et al. "Automaticity of lexical access in deaf and hearing bilinguals: Cross-linguistic evidence from the color Stroop task across five languages." Cognition. (2021): 1-22. Web.
Bosworth, Rain G., Adam Stone, and So-One Hwang. "Effects of Video Reversal on Gaze Patterns during Signed Narrative Comprehension." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 25. 3 (2020): enaa007. Web.
Bosworth, Rain G., Charles E. Wright, and Karen R. Dobkins. "Analysis of the visual spatiotemporal properties of American Sign Language." Vision Research 164. (2019): 34-43. Web.
Stone, Adam and Rain G. Bosworth. "Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm." Journal of Visualized Experiments 147. (2019): e59581. Web.
Stone, Adam, Laura-Ann Petitto, and Rain Bosworth. "Visual sonority modulates infants’ attraction to sign language." Language Learning and Development 14. 2 (2018): 130-148. Print.
Published Conference Proceedings
Bosworth, Rain G., et al. "Automaticity of Visual Word & Sign Processing in Deaf Bilinguals: Evidence from the Stroop Task." Proceedings of the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research. Ed. Annika Herrmann, et al. Hamburg, Germany: TISLR, 2019. Web.

Currently Teaching

NDLS-285
Undergraduate Research: Liberal Studies
1 - 4 Credits
This course is a faculty-directed student research project at the undergraduate level. The research will entail an in-depth study in the discipline that could be considered of an original nature. Enrollment in this course requires permission from the Department Chair and completion of the NTID Undergraduate Research Contract.
PSYC-226
Developmental Psychology
3 Credits
This course explores the process of human development, from conception through adolescence and continuing through later adulthood. The developmental approach integrates across many areas of psychology, including perception, cognition, social and emotional development, personality, morality, human factors, and neuroscience. Topics will include such things as infant brain plasticity, the development of identity in adolescence, and memory changes in adulthood. In addition, experimental methods of developmental research will be introduced and practiced, including issues specific to studying children and adults.
PSYC-510
Senior Project in Psychology
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate experimental research expertise, while being guided by faculty advisors. The topic to be studied is up to the student, who must find a faculty advisor before signing up for the course. Students will be supervised by the advisor as they conduct their literature review, develop the research question or hypothesis, develop the study methodology and materials, construct all necessary IRB materials, run subjects, and analyze the results of their study. This course will culminate in an APA style paper and poster presentation reporting the results of the research. Because Senior Project is the culmination of a student’s scientific research learning experience in the psychology major, it is expected that the project will be somewhat novel, will extend the theoretical understanding of their previous work (or of the previous work of another researcher), and go well beyond any similar projects that they might have done in any of their previous courses.
PSYC-550
Undergraduate Research Experience
0 Credits
Practicum open to psychology students. Gives the student first-hand experience in the field of psychology working on research that matches the student's career objectives. Students are closely supervised by a faculty member, developing relevant skills and learning how to do research first-hand. May count for the equivalent of the psychology co-op experience with prior approval and sufficient time commitment. (3rd or 4th year status). Prerequisites PSYC-101, -250, -251. Credit 0 (F, S, Su)
PSYC-753
Thesis
3 Credits
The Thesis courses will vary widely but will fulfill the work plan agreed by the student and the thesis adviser. The guiding principle of the Thesis course is to complete the thesis research proposed in Thesis Proposal. The Thesis course consists of carrying out the thesis research, including collection and analysis of data, and completion and public defense of the thesis document for partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree.
PSYC-798
Advanced Research in Psychology
3 Credits
Practicum open to MSc Experimental Psychology students. This course gives the student first-hand experience in the field of Psychology. The experience may involve a specific research project or other relevant professional development projects independent of the student’s thesis research. Students are closely supervised by a faculty member and will develop skills and gain experience in relevant advanced research and professional development in Experimental Psychology.

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