During my BSc and MSc I undertook developmental research projects interested in factors relating to various verbal and written language skills. In my BSc I investigated developmental patterns of the Attentional Blink and for my MSc I studied the effects of phonological and semantic interaction on verbal short term memory in typically developing children and children with dyslexia. My research and teaching career have heavily influenced one another, which has enabled me to experience as well as consider the real-world impact developmental and educational research can have.
Investigating factors that influence the generalisation of newly learnt grammatical rules in children and adults.
I am interested in verbal and written language development in both typical and atypical populations. My current PhD research is exploring typical verbal grammar learning and development through the learning mechanism ‘Statistical Learning’. Statistical Learning is the ability to extract patterns from the environment and my focus is on how different grammatical patterns interact in this learning process. I also investigate factors that may influence the generalisation of these patterns to novel words, in both children and adults. To explore this, I employ psycholinguistic training and testing techniques using an artificial language, which incorporates different grammatical patterns drawn from natural languages. I also collect data on a range of standardised test to investigate associations between performance on the psycholinguistic tasks and other verbal and non-verbal abilities.
Paper Presentations
Posters