|
Dr. Janet Feldman Werker is Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia Her research focuses on understanding the maturational and experiential factors that make possible the child's entry into language acquisition. Her work together with her students is primarily with infants from birth up to 20 months of age (although on occasion we also conduct studies with children and adults) to identify the kinds of perceptual biases infants bring to speech perception, the role specific linguistic input plays in modifying perceptual categories, how these changing categories help the child move on to acquiring language, and the advances in learning and cognition that contribute to this process. They have identified a number of milestones in early infancy that reveal the child’s progress on this wonderful journey of discovery. Recently, they have begun extending this work to infants being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment to see what the impact of growing up with more than one language has on speech perception and early language acquisition. They have also begun to work with infants who are “at risk” for developmental or specific language delays, to see if the tests we have developed can help identify which of those are in most need of early intervention. A new study, extending this work to infants at risk for autism is being planned.
Web site: http://infantstudies.psych.ubc.ca/index.htm
|
