Research
Ongoing Projects
VERB LEARNING
The role of Environment in Verb Learning
Becki Smyder, W&M 2020
Alice Benjamin, W&M 2021
Monica Bagnoli, W&M 2025
This study explores how children use different kinds of cues when they are learning new verbs. We are interested in the role of an event's location in children's hypotheses about a verb's meaning. We compare the background enviornment as a cue to different types of linguistic cues, including a language's preference for encoding manner (how a movement happens) vs. path (where a movement happens), and more universal cues like senstence structure. We find that children are more sensitive to changing background than changing agent, and that they are more sensitive to background when an event occurs in a more unusual location, such as in the air or underwater.
Participants needed: English monolinguals age 4-7
Attitude Verbs
Kate Harrigan, W&M Faculty
This study explores how children learn verbs about people's minds, like think and want. Previous studies show that children are sensitive to sentence structure when they learn new words. This might be especially helpful for words like think, which are hard to observe in the world. We test whether children are able to use sentence structure to learn this type of verb by setting up a game with a puppet who has mental states about certain outcomes in the game. Then, a different puppet utters sentences using a novel verb with different sentence structures, for example, "Dragon kertunks that the shape is a heart!" or "Dragon kertunks to get a heart!". The child's job is to tell this puppet whether they are right or wrong which tells us something about how they interpret the sentences.
Participants needed: English monolinguals age 4.
DETERMINERS
Acquisition of Determiners in Children
Sadwhi Srinivas, W&M Faculty
Josie Summers, W&M 2025
Chloe Kim, W&M 2024
This study is focused on understanding how young children learn to use determiners like "a" and "the". Not all of the world's languages use determiners like we do in English, some languages, such as Kannada, don't have determiners at all, and allow speakers to use "bare nouns" (nouns without a necessary determiner).
Participants needed: English monolinguals ages 3-6 years
Past Projects
PHONOLOGY
Subphonemic Cues
Anya Hogoboom, W&M Faculty
Abigail Fergus, W&M 2021
Rowan Levick, W&M 2023
This study explores how children learn verbs about people's minds, like think and want. Previous studies show that children are sensitive to sentence structure when they learn new words. This might be especially helpful for words like think, which are hard to observe in the world. We test whether children are able to use sentence structure to learn this type of verb by setting up a game with a puppet who has mental states about certain outcomes in the game. Then, a different puppet utters sentences using a novel verb with different sentence structures, for example, "Dragon kertunks that the shape is a heart!" or "Dragon kertunks to get a heart!". The child's job is to tell this puppet whether they are right or wrong which tells us something about how they interpret the sentences.
BILINGUALISM
Verbs of Motion
Becki Smyder, W&M 2020
This study explores how children learn verbs of motion, which describe either manner (i.e. how a person moves, like walk) or a path (i.e. where a person moves, like exit). While English has mostly manner verbs, Spanish has a more balanced inventory of manner and path verbs. We explore whether English-learning children are better at learning manner compared to path verbs, and whether exposure to Spanish gives bilinguals an advantage in learning path verbs. Children watch short videos with actions named by novel verbs, and then choose which of the two new videos is the best example of the same verb.
Bilingualism and Emotion
Caitlyn Whitesell, W&M 2020
This study explores how learning multiple languages might influence emotional processing in children. Previous studies report that many multilinguals feel emotion differently depending on the language they are using. We hope to better understand this difference by asking Spanish-English bilingual preschool and elementary school-aged children to rate stories on a child-friendly emotional response scale.
THEORY OF MIND
Pretend Play
Grace Marks, W&M 2021
Valerie Bambha, W&M 2019
This study explores how engaging in pretend play might facilitate social development. We explore whether the role-shifting and perspective-taking elements of pretend play help children develop the ability to represent the belief states of others. In this study, children will engage in a short play session with a researcher, after which they will answer a few questions about the actions of a character in a short story.
