Research

Children interact with numerous individuals, inside and outside of their immediate family. How do different interactive contexts contribute to children's understanding of the social world, their acquisition of language, and their overall socio-cognitive development? Using in-person and online studies, we will investigate some of the many social settings that children engage in, and how each of these contexts support children's learning.

We talk differently to different people: just think of how you talk to a young child, as opposed to a peer! We not only change our tone, but we change the content and structure of speech. These adaptations may seem natural to us, but how did we learn to employ them effortlessly? In our lab, we explore how children learn about adaptation, and how they begin to use it spontaneously in their conversations with others.

From birth (and even prior), infants are exposed to language. While babies don't talk (yet), they are processing language. What do they make of these sounds that they hear every day? When do they begin to grasp that language is intended for communication? Using looking-time paradigms, we will dive into the minds of infants, with the goal of finding out what language means to the youngest among us.