Hi All! I’ve missed this board so much and hope soon to be on it considerably more 
For those who aren’t familiar with me, I was fairly active about two years ago and beyond (has it really been that long???), but prompted by frustration at the lack of scientific evidence to support early learning, especially with something so fundamental as reading, I decided to return to academia. Needless to say, I’ve had ‘no life’ between trying to teach my own kids and trying to get myself ready to conduct experiments. But the good news is that FINALLY, I’ve received a green light to start the process. Keep in mind I’m in the early stages (the planning stage), and that it may be 2 more years before anything promising is published in a respectable scientific journal (let’s hope sooner!), but I personally think that planning is one of the most important steps.
I could use your input. Frankly, there is a fairly thick cloud of evidence supporting the stance that babies canNOT read, that they can ‘merely’ memorize, but not truly abstract meaning, yadee, yadee. The point is that thanks to past studies (primarily aimed at attacking YBCR, I feel) the scientific community is presently doused with nay-sayers, so I want to make sure that whatever experiments are put through now are mind-blowingly successful and can be easily/successfully duplicated, so that we can finally put to rest this myth that kiddos must wait until they are at LEAST three to begin introduction to reading ("Say, WHAT? We know it ain’t so! 8) ).
I am grateful to be aligned with an expert in this field (infancy/developmental psychology) who I have been able to convince (after months of dialogue) that infant reading is at least possible, and so he is curious and willing to help with/sign off on the first studies. Assuming those go well, there should be many more (mua haha). Typically there would be a think tank bouncing around ideas about how to conduct the experiment before participants are even called upon. Also, there would be several phone calls made to other scientists who have had prior success to make sure that the experiment proposed is unique. My issue is that I don’t really have anyone in the scientific community with past success, let alone anyone with personal experience beyond a lab. There’s not even a handful of people who I can reach out to, so I’m pretty close to starting from scratch and without anyone with as much passion and personal experience as you all. So I’m reaching out to YOU (yes, you!), and hoping for your help.
I’m a fan of sharing, but I’m not a fan of lurkers (sorry). I would really like open dialogue about this, so while I have trust in this public forum community, I feel more at ease if I have a better understanding of who is ‘in’ on the conversation; I hope you understand. For this reason I have put together a FB group. I may change the URL (maybe not), but for now, it is https://www.facebook.com/groups/BabiesCan/. If you are up for bouncing ideas on how to put together a successful experiment, please join the group. My goal is to have this hashed out relatively soon so that I can start calling on the first participants at the beginning of the year. If I’m successful with this first round, I’m sure that several follow-up experiments will be conducted (in many locations) as curiosity builds about how this ‘infant reading phenomena’ works. From there it’s a matter of time before focus is turned to math, music, agility, memory/right-brain learning, and more. I’m looking forward to my children not feeling like fish swimming against the stream when it comes to teaching their (way, way in the future) kids. :biggrin:
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this forum to make it such an inspiration!
and of course, inspire it to be duplicated with success and then change the prevailing belief to one in support of teaching children to read while infants. whether it shows up at some point in a dissertation (or a book) is another matter, but not one that i’m entertaining until this first step is taken.