We investigate language learning in babies, toddlers, & bilingual children. A major goal of our work is to understand how young children are able learn so much in such a small amount of time. Babies initially hear meaningless sounds from their parents, but eventually learn thousands of words. Questions we're interested in:
•How do babies put together the small building blocks of language?
•How do
toddlers learn to process words and sentences in real time?
•How do young bilingual children make sense of their two languages?
•Why does language learning happen so differently for different children? We are always looking for parents and children to participate in our research! Appointments are usually 30 minutes long with the study itself taking only 5 or 10 minutes. The studies usually involve your child looking at pictures and hearing sentences. Our studies are completely harmless and are often fun and engaging for your child. During the study, we video tape your child so that we can watch it later on to learn more about what your child learned from the study. We know that you are very busy and tired as a parent, but think of this as a unique experience to volunteer in the community and contribute to developmental science. Sign up form available at:
http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/departments/csd/research/sign_up.php
