Current Studies

Word Learning and Memory in Children with DLD

Why do children sometimes demonstrate good learning during a lesson, but forget the information when the lesson is over? Past research shows that some teaching strategies lead to learning in the moment, but rapid forgetting afterwards. Other teaching strategies support both learning and retention of that learning.

Our lab is dedicated to understanding children's memory processes and identifying strategies that support retention of word learning. We include children with typical development and developmental language disorder (DLD) in this research. Additionally, we conduct both experimental and intervention research.

The results from this research will help teachers support word learning across a variety of learners in their classrooms. Additionally, results from this research will help clinicians determine the best strategies to foster word learning and long-term retention of that learning in children with DLD.

Word Learning in Noise

Children live, play and learn in environments that are often noisy. To understand language development, it is essential to understand how children learn language in different types and intensities of background noise. For example, in a classroom, there might be a fan running and kids talking in the background. In some environments the background noise might be quite loud and in others the background noise will not be as loud.

To gain a better understanding of the effect of background noise, we are studying how these noise variations affect children's ability to learn and remember words. This study's long-term goal is to determine factors that can be changed to support word learning in the typical classroom environment.​