IDC Seminar by Assistant Professor Yow Wei Quin

16 Sep 2015 3.30 PM to 4.30 PM Lecture Theatre 5, Building 2, Level 5, 2.505

You are cordially invited to a seminar by Assistant Professor Yow Wei Quin. 

Abstract
Having a network of social interactions and personal relationships is a needed quality for successful transition and adaptation to new environments. Social support, or the perception of having a network of people around oneself who are able to provide informational, emotional, or tangible support, contributes positively to psychological adjustment and well-being. One of the important ways that first year college students transitioning from high school seek out friendships and obtain social support is through shared identity via shared languages. The social identity theory proposes that convergence of human behavior is often through the language used within social groups. Language is often considered to be one of the most salient markers of social identity, and impacts the ways in which relationship networks are formed and how social support is solicited or offered. As such, language can influence the emergence and development of social networks, and consequently, from whom one would like to seek social support or to whom to give support.
 
Advanced mobile sensing, self-reports and stochastic actor-driven modeling techniques were used to investigate the effects of language on co-location, friendship, and call networks with first- and second-year students from a bilingual population across one academic year. Results suggested that first-years seek out others and formed friendship ties via shared language. Homophily effects of language with second-years in the call and friendship networks were significant, but they appeared to co-locate more with others with different language usage tendencies. The study provided important insights on how social interactions and friendships emerge in college in the context of language use in bilingual communities.
 
About the Speaker
Assistant Professor Yow Wei Quin obtained her PhD (Psychology), MA (Psychology) and MSc (Statistics) from Stanford University, USA. She also received her MBA (Strategic Development) from Nanyang Technological University and BSocSc. (Honors in Psychology) from National University of Singapore. She has published in numerous peer-refereed international journals and book chapters and presented papers in various international conferences on the impact of bilingualism on socio-cognitive development and academic motivation in education.