My research focuses on speech perception and language acquisition. More specifically, I am interested in how the brain recognizes and learns words from fluent speech, especially in the context of noise, and how this ability changes with development. Recent research has examined topics such as: 1) infants' ability to recognize their name in the context of noise or poor signal quality;  2) how information from one stream of speech can influence the perceptual processing of an alternate stream of speech;  3) the effect of noise or signal degradation on children's ability to learn new words; 4) the effects of lexical neighbors on children's and adult's word naming, both those who are typically developing and those who have word-finding difficulties or who stutter 5) whether infant perceptual abilities and parental input predict later language development; 6) children's ability to comprehend degraded speech, such as that produced by a cochlear-implant; 7) the effect of sports-related concussions on children's language processing.  Current and recent grants focus on 1) the potential contributing roles of speech segmentation, statistical learning, and parental input in children's language acquisition, 2) how bilingual exposure during infancy affects the ability to attend to speech in noise, 3) children's ability to combine information from multiple sources (including effects of prior knowledge) 4) the ability of young children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to understand speech in noise, and 5) early perceptual differences between children at risk for an ASD diagnosis and those not at risk. We are also working to develop a new software system for testing young infants in listening studies, and have begun testing our canine companions' abilities to understand human language.

You can download my public-oriented research statement here.