Lectures on Tap - "Bilingual Advantage Hypothesis, Explored"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Bilingual Advantage Hypothesis, Explored"

🎙️ Speaker: Professor Rita Barakat

Join us for a captivating evening as Professor Rita Barakat unpacks the “Bilingual Advantage Hypothesis” – the idea that speaking more than one language may enhance executive functioning, including decision-making, planning, and managing interference.

Drawing on her ongoing behavioral research with diverse USC undergraduates, Professor Barakat will share fresh findings using the classic Stroop task to probe how language experience may shape attention and control. She will also introduce the fundamentals of the neuroanatomy of language, common language disorders, and provocative theories of perception such as the Sapir-Whorf Theory.

Rita Barakat, PhD (she/her), is an Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience at USC and Principal Investigator of the Stroop Troop research group. A proud alum of the USC Neuroscience Graduate Program, she teaches courses spanning cell biology, physiology, neurobiology, and cognitive science, while mentoring the next generation of neuroscientists.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

7:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

7:55 PM – Host introduction

8:00 PM – Lecture begins

8:45 PM – Audience Q&A

9:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

9:30 PM – Wrap up.