Joining Our Lab
Prospective PhD students: Please visit this page
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Our lab welcomes enthusiastic, motivated undergraduate students to work starting in Fall 2023! Research assistants are usually involved in developing and making materials for studies, subject recruitment, and running experiments with children and adults. Our undergraduate researchers often stay with us for a year or longer to gain research experience and learn about how to use scientific methods to study how people--especially young children--learn from others and help others learn.
What’s involved? Minimal commitment is 9-10 hours/week (3 research credits) for at least two quarters, and we’d love you to stay longer! Federal work-study is also an option for students who are eligible for the program.
The exact nature of your work will depend on your level of prior experience and skills, and change as you gain more experience. You will most likely be paired with and mentored by a graduate student, post-doc, or our lab manager, and so your exact work will also depend on which projects they have going on! Many of our research assistants help with conducting studies with children, including creating stimuli, testing, and marking their responses.
At the least, we expect our researchers to be comfortable recruiting families in public settings and interacting with them. Previous research experience and/or working with children are not necessary but preferable. We welcome people with creative minds and artistic skills, as we often need to design booklets, animations, and videos that contain our experimental stimuli or even build our own “toys” that light up or play music. There are also opportunities in the lab to learn and apply various technical skills, including proficiency with R, Matlab, Qualtrics, Python, HTML, JavaScript, and video editing software, and we welcome students with these skills. However, these are not requirements for new research assistants; we just expect you to be open to learning them together with your mentor as research projects evolve.
See our People page to meet our undergraduate assistants, and feel free to reach out to them if you’d like to learn more about their experience!
To apply: Please fill out this short application and attach your resume within the form. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting September 22 until all positions are filled. If you have any questions, please contact Aneesa Conine-Nakano (lab manager) at sociallearninglab [at] stanford [dot] edu.
For opportunities in other labs, refer to Stanford Psychology website for research opportunities.
Post-bac Research Assistants
SLL currently has a few post-bac RAs. These are usually students who are planning to pursue a PhD in the field and working in a lab to gain more research experience. Some are full-time positions (e.g., lab manager) that are recruited nationally every 2-3 years. Others are >part-time positions, starting from 10-20 hours/week; these positions often start with a few weeks of volunteer trial period before transitioning to a paid position. Note that we can only hire people who are already authorized to work in the U.S., and cannot sponsor work visas (e.g., H1B).
Tip: To search for Post-bac RA or lab manager positions, consider signing up for the COGDEV and COGSCI mailing lists. Many labs/researchers (including us) post calls/ads for these positions using these lists.
Open Positions: We currently do not have an idea of how many open positions the lab will have in the near future. Please check back in the Winter for updates here, or look for calls for applications on the CDS/CogSci listserv. We tend to recruit on a rolling basis. If you'd like to share your general interest (not for a specific position), please contact Aneesa Conine-Nakano (lab manager) at sociallearninglab [at] stanford [dot] edu.
Summer Internship Opportunities
Stanford Undergraduates: We recruit summer interns through two programs -- PsychSummer and SymSys Summer Internship. Students also apply for UAR Major Grants to continue their research over the summer, including their work towards an Honors Thesis. Some apply for Work-Study. While it is not a requirement, students who pursue summer research in our lab typically have already worked with us for 1 or more quarters.
Non-Stanford Undergraduates: We typically recruit summer interns through the CSLI program and Early Identification Program. Both programs go through separate admissions process, so please contact program offices for more information.
Open Positions: Please check back in late January/early February for more information about our Summer 2024 internship.
High-School Students
We typically do not accept high-school students as research assistants, except for students who have been accepted to the RISE program. For other opportunities at Stanford, refer to Stanford's Outreach Programs.
Note that we can only accept students who were admitted through these programs. We are sorry but we cannot host volunteer summer interns.