Jeffrey Lidz is Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland. Lidz received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Delaware and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania from 1997-2000. He also held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratoire de Science Cognitive et Psycholinguistique in Paris in 1998. He was Assistant Professor at Northwestern University from 2000 until he moved to the University of Maryland in 2005. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and he played a key role in the founding of the University of Maryland’s Language Science Center. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics and is the editor-in-chief of Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics.

 

Degrees

  • PhD
    Linguistics, University of Delaware, 1996
  • MA
    Linguistics, University of Delaware, 1992
  • BS
    Journalism, Northwestern University, 1990

Jeff’s research has two primary foci: (a) the relation between comparative syntax-semantics and language acquisition and (b) the role of extra-linguistic cognition in language processing and acquisition. His work draws from languages as diverse as English, French, Kannada, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog and Tsez. His work also makes use of a wide range of empirical tools, including traditional distributional analysis, truth-value judgment experiments, preferential looking, habituation-switch, eye-tracking, self-paced reading, and techniques from the psychophysics of vision. Both his linguistic and methodological diversity reflects a commitment to letting questions of theory determine both the language and the right method of investigation.

 
Research Methods
Linguistics
Computational Modeling
Research Interests
Language
Cognitive Development
Vision
Social Cognition and Theory of Mind
Development
Innate Behaviors
Learning and Memory
Dr. Jeffrey Lidz
1417 Marie Mount Hall
Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Email
jlidz [at] umd.edu