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From the Director
Faculty, staff, and students in the Sensory, Perceptual, and Cognitive Ecology (SPACE) Center conduct research into how deaf children and adults make sense of the world using their visual abilities. We avoid ableist misconceptions of deaf individuals, focusing instead on how being deaf transforms the ways in which individuals navigate and explore the world around them.
About the Center
We study the sensory, perceptual and cognitive abilities of deaf individuals over the lifespan, from infancy to adulthood. Our guiding philosophy is that deaf individuals are not just passively transformed by their deafness; they also actively engage with and shape their environments.
SPACE promotes transparent ("open") science in an accessible environment free from harassment and judgment that allows all individuals to achieve their learning goals and desired employment outcomes. We encourage all interested students, staff and faculty to engage with us and learn more about what we do.
News
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August 20, 2024
![human hands are shown putting a clear disk with blue wires extending from it on to a machine.]()
New Ph.D. programs welcome students this fall
The university’s two newest Ph.D. programs in cognitive science and physics offer diverse research opportunities for students and help them gain the skills and abilities needed to analyze data and grasp complex concepts. The new programs bring RIT’s total doctoral programs to 15.
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April 29, 2024
![Rain Bosworth smiling and looking at a parent-child pair to her left. She has blonde hair and blue eyes and wearing blue button-up shirt. The parent is looking at an iPad, sitting in front of them on a round table. The iPad is displaying what appears to be a video with a person signing. The parent has black hair and wearing a navy polka dot shirt. The child is sitting on the parent's lap and staring at Bosworth.]()
Rain Bosworth studies how deaf children experience the world
ScienceNews talks to Rain Bosworth, associate professor in the Department of Liberal Studies, about her research.
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August 7, 2023
![Two toddlers play with colorful plastic toys.]()
Deaf children’s learning during museum experiences is focus of research study
New research exploring how deaf and hearing preschool-aged children learn through interactive play with their parents is the focus of a partnership between RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf and The Strong National Museum of Play.
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May 9, 2022
![mother and child reading a Sesame Street book.]()
New lab studies cognitive development in children
Rain Bosworth, an assistant professor and experimental psychologist at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, has created a new research lab that will help scientists learn more about cognition, language, and perception in infants and young children.
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January 31, 2022
![student wearing sensors on her head adjusts a robotic arm.]()
AI research collaboration begins
Cecilia Alm, an associate professor in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, was awarded nearly $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead a team of RIT faculty addressing a lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence research community and gaps in AI curricula.
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December 7, 2021
![researcher standing outsite next to a sign that reads Play Lab, perception, language and attention in youth lab.]()
NTID PLAY Lab initiates new research on cognitive development in infants and children
A new research lab, sponsored by NTID, will soon open to help scientists learn more about cognition, language, and perception in infants and young children.
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September 21, 2021
![student making adjustments to a robotic arm.]()
RIT awarded nearly $2 million for NSF Research Traineeship Program, AWARE-AI
To help address a lack of diversity, as well as gaps in AI curricula, RIT was awarded a grant of nearly $2 million by the NSF to create a new research traineeship program for graduate students
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March 30, 2021
![baby looking at a computer screen.]()
RIT/NTID researcher finds that sign-language exposure impacts infants as young as 5 months old
While it isn’t surprising that infants and children love to look at people’s movements and faces, recent research from NTID studies exactly where they look when they see someone using sign language. The research uses eye-tracking technology that offers a non-invasive and powerful tool to study cognition and language learning in pre-verbal infants.
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January 11, 2021
![professor wearing labcoat and examining a grow on a petri dish.]()
RIT Sponsored Research garners $82 million
RIT had its best year ever for sponsored research funding. For fiscal year 2020, which ended June 30, RIT received 382 new awards totaling $82 million. The record funding follows almost $58 million in research expenditures in fiscal year 2019, also a record.
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September 4, 2020
![two researchers posing in front of poster presentation.]()
RIT/NTID researchers study how deaf and hearing people watch sign language
A recent study has shown that readers’ eye gaze behaviors are strong indicators of words that are unexpected, new, or difficult to understand. The study by Rain Bosworth, an assistant professor and researcher at NTID, explores the unknown qualities of gaze behavior for “sign watching” and how these are affected by a user’s language expertise and intelligibility of the sign input.
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March 13, 2019
![Head-and-shoulders view of man with glasses]()
New research unlocking the secrets of how languages change
New research is helping scientists around the world understand what drives language change, especially when languages are in their infancy. The results will shed light on how the limitations of the human brain change language and provide an understanding of the complex interaction between languages and the human beings who use them.
