Language Development Group
Our aim is to understand how children learn language, how the developing brain supports this process, and how it is affected by cross-linguistic, socio-cultural and individual variation.
We study how children segment the speech stream, how children learn words and concepts, how children acquire the grammar of their language, and how these processes are supported by the language-learning environment.
Our approach is cross-disciplinary and multi-methodological, combining information from corpus analysis, behavioural experiments, computational modelling and EEG to build explanatory models of the language learning process and how it breaks down in children with language difficulties.
We regularly welcome parents and their infants and toddlers into our lab to take part in our research studies. You can find out about the studies we are currently running here.
Knowledge Exchange
We are one of the major partners in the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD) at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster, regularly engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, including the BBC, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, Speech and Language, UK, and the National Literacy Trust. We are represented on the Language Advisory Group of the BBC’s Tiny Happy People Initiative. Our group members make regular media appearances (e.g., The Guardian, BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth) and contribute to public engagement events including British Science Week and Meet the Scientist.
We collaborate with other major Universities and Research Institutes (including the University of Sheffield and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen). For the latest on our research see our Instagram.