Studies
Research Overview
The research in our lab addresses how the brains of typically developing children process language to increase our understanding of language acquisition and development. To address these issues we use electrophysiology, analyzed to study the Event Related Potentials, or ERPs, and the neural oscillations that underlie cognitive and linguistic processing in children and adults.
Current Studies
Word Learning in Auditory and Written Modality
This project aims to investigate how children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds learn new words in different contexts (auditory and written) using behavioral and brain measures. The study focuses on two age groups (9-12 years old) and the researchers will assess the children’s language and cognitive abilities, record their brain activity (EEG) while completing word inferencing tasks, and gather information about their home environment. The study aims to understand the variability in word learning and its impact on vocabulary growth after 6 months and 1 year, with the ultimate goal of developing tailored learning plans for all children to maximize their potential.
Neural Responses to Speech in Noise
Processing spoken language in noisy environments requires the utilization of higher-order cognitive processes to effectively extract the target signal. This involves attending to the desired speech while suppressing surrounding noise and predicting upcoming words based on the language context. These processes can be intertwined as a noisy environment can affect the process of less predictable sentences more than highly predictable sentences.
Alpha power has been associated with cognitive inhibition and language prediction. In our study, we aim to investigate how competing noise and semantic constraints interact and influence alpha power during sentence processing. We predict that listening in noise will increase alpha power compared to quiet conditions, irrespective of the level of semantic constraint. Additionally, we expect constrained contexts to exhibit lower alpha power than unconstrained contexts, both in quiet and noisy conditions. Moreover, we will examine how individual differences in behavioral speech-in-noise skills relate to changes in alpha power during language processing in noise. We anticipate that individuals with strong speech-in-noise abilities will effectively modulate alpha power in noisy conditions, while those with strong language prediction skills will adapt alpha levels associated with the semantic prediction.
In this study college students will be completing different language, behavioral and cognitive assessments in both noise and quiet, while their EEG data is recorded.
LENA
English has been widely recognized as a language used to communicate between people around the world, be it someone’s first, second, or even third language. However, there have been many studies that show adults who have learned English as a second or more language had an advantage due to their knowledge in another. While understanding is a large part of language acquisition, being able to learn the rules and communicate effectively is that much more important.
This leads the way into what our study is focused on. As mentioned, many studies have focused on adults and how they have developed over time after language acquisition has passed. In our study we aim our focus on a younger group of children between the ages of 3 and 5. This age range is what many researchers working in child language development look at because this is said to be the time when we as individuals really solidify how we speak any language.
In this study, children between the ages of 3 and 5 will carry a LENA device that is placed on their shirt for 2 days with 16 hours of recordings each. The recordings from these devices will show us how children communicate with parents and in what language to better understand the difference in language acquisition between bilingual and native English speaking children.
If you would like to bring your child or sibling in to participate in this study, please reach out to us through our email and we would be more than happy to get you set up!
Past Studies:
How the Brain Predicts Based on Context
In grade school, learning new words allows children to access, think about, and discuss new ideas. Building a robust, age-appropriate vocabulary supports reading comprehension throughout school. Evidence shows that children from low socioeconomic homes, on average, have more difficulty learning new words from written materials in the classroom. However, whether this carries over to learning from auditory materials is unclear. Further, some children from similar environments defy the odds and excel at word learning. In this project, we use brain and behavioral measures to identify which children struggle vs excel at word learning, in which context (auditory vs written) and why. From this data, we can provide tailored learning plans to help support vocabulary growth for all children in grade school, allowing each to reach their full potential.
The objective of this study is to use behavioral and brain measures to study variability in the process of word inferencing (a key component of word learning) in the auditory and written modalities within a group of children from lower SES homes and the implications of those differences for vocabulary growth 6 months and 1 year later. We will study children across 2 age groups: ages 9-10 and 11-12 (approx. 3rd-7th grade). These are ages when reading greatly improves, and expectations of “reading to learn” become critical across academics. Children will complete language and cognitive assessments as well as auditory and written word inferencing tasks as their EEG is recorded. Parents will complete home environment surveys. Assessments will occur after 6 months and 1 year to measure vocabulary growth.
How the Brain Differentiates Hammers from Cows
Adults seem to engage different areas of their brain when they identify an object compared to an animal as well as when they hear a word for an object compared to an animal. There are potential evolutionary reasons for this as well as other, contrasting theories about how experience leads to these unique neuronal processes. In this group of studies we want to identify the origins and development of these differences. Children hear a word for an object (“hammer”) or an animal (“dog”) followed by a picture. They have to identify if the picture matches the word. Our goal is to identify differences and similarities in the processing of words and pictures for objects and animals to help uncover how words and concepts in the brain come to engage the complex, well differentiated system that we find in adults. This will help us to learn more about the brain, language and cognition across the lifespan.
Eye-Tracking and EEG: Are Eyes Really the Window to the Soul?
To complement our studies on object and animal identification, we are also trying to identify what features children use to differentiate objects from one another, the development of the neurological underpinnings of this feature detection, and how focusing on those features may speed recognition. In this group of studies, as a participant’s EEG data is collected we track their eye gaze (using a Tobii 750 Eye-Tracker) while they identify pictures of animals as dogs or non-dogs. Previous studies have found that clearest, most efficient way to differentiate animals is by attending to their head. The goal in this study is to uncover the brain’s response at the point when the participant looks at the head to capture information about specific object identification. Such studies provide better insights into how what information children and adults use to categorize and identify information in the environment.
Studies of Nouns and Verbs
Verbs are more difficult for children to learn than nouns. This difference is even larger in children who have language delays or disorders. In our lab, we have a series of studies investigating the development of noun and verb knowledge, with the goal of using these results to understand why children with language problems fail to learn verbs and how therapists can help.
When is a picture worth 1000 words? Finding a noun or a verb:
One reason that children have difficulties learning verbs compared to nouns is that verbs can refer to events that all look quite different: a leaf falling out of a tree and an old man falling down on ice are quite distinct from each other even though they both involve the action of “falling.” This stands in contrast to the relative similarity between nouns—i.e. that found between all “leaves” or all “old men.” In addition, a single particular action can also have lots of different verbs that refer to it. A girl leaving a room can be described as “leaving,” “exiting,” “walking,” “stepping out,” or “fleeing.” On the other hand, the noun in this case—the door she walks out of—will probably always be called a door.
To test how matching a verb to an action differs from matching a noun to an object, adults and children who came to the lab listened to a word (noun or verb) that was followed by a picture that contained an object and an action (a man sitting in a chair). They were then asked to indicate whether the word and the subsequent picture matched one another. For adults, this task was easy for both objects and actions, and they answered both items quickly and accurately. Interestingly, when we looked at their brain activity measured by EEG, we found important differences in the processing that followed each type of word. When a verb didn’t match the picture, participants’ brains showed a late response indicating that even when an action wasn’t identified quickly, the adults checked the picture again to be sure it didn’t fit some other aspect of the picture (similar to walking or exiting). This did not happen when the noun did not match the object. If an object wasn’t in the picture, there was no need to check again. It seems that a picture is indeed worth 1000 verbs, but many fewer nouns. The findings with adults are currently under review by a scientific journal that focuses on adult neurocognitive abilities.
This finding sheds some light on why children have problems with verbs. Even in a seemingly very simple task, college students had to think twice about the verb meanings. This is likely much more difficult for a 3 or 4-year-old, just learning how to label all of the actions and events in the world. We are still working on this study with children. We want to know if children show similar or different responses for verbs nouns and verbs compared to adults. Hopefully, when we have enough participants, we will know the answer!
Grammatical Processing in Typically Developing Children and Those with Language Delays
Not only do children with language delays have problems identifying verbs compared to nouns, but they have problems using verbs correctly in sentences. For example, children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a disorder diagnosed in 7% of children, are more likely to say sentences with verb phrase errors (“She walk to the store”) than with noun phrase errors (“She walks to store”). Researchers and speech therapists have struggled to identify if this is a problem in processing the verb phrases or in producing them. We are currently conducting a group of projects to study this question. We are comparing how children with SLI and children without the disorder process each word in an ongoing sentence as well as how they respond to relatively subtle grammatical errors. In adults and typically developing children, the brain responds to grammatical errors in a very typical way, with an increase is positive electric potential at about 600 milliseconds after one hears the mistake. By comparing these findings to the brain responses of children with SLI we can better understand if their problems stem from processing or production difficulties. This will have important implications for future treatments.
So far we found that even adults have much more robust brain responses to noun errors than verb errors. It is no wonder that children, especially those who are struggling already, are having greater difficulty producing these grammatical features correctly. We are currently still collecting data with children.