Expertise
Research Interests:
- Language Development
- Second Language Learning and Bilingualism
- Event Perception
- Language and Thought
- Development of Intuitive Physics
My research centers on infants' and children's developing understanding of events and how they are represented in language. A primary component of this research concerns the basic cognitive processes underlying verb learning in both first and second language acquisition. Current questions under examination include:
- What are the mechanisms through which infants and adults build complex events such as "washing hands" or "making the bed?"
- How does the way in which our native language represents the world affect our ability to learn a second language?
In addition to these questions, I am also investigating the relation between children's linguistic and non-linguistic representations of causality, force, and motion. Questions within this line of inquiry include:
- How do children develop naïve and correct conceptions regarding how forces interact?
- Do linguistic representations of force and motion affect the way in which children and adults reason about these events?
My research adopts a developmental approach to explore the challenges confronting learners as they impose the discrete representational system of language onto the continuous flow of events in the world. Some areas of inquiry include:
- Verb Learning
- Event Segmentation
- Statistical Learning
- Second Language Learning and Bilingualism
- Language and Thought
- Force and Motion Understanding
- Science of Learning
Recent and Ongoing Research:
- Event Perception and Verb Learning
- Hierarchies in Language and Events
- Development of Conceptions of Force and Motion
- Second Language Learning and Bilingualism