Dr. Erica Cartmill

My research interests center on the evolution of language and the cognitive antecedents to language. I am particularly interested in the relationship between gestural and vocal communication on both evolutionary and ontogenetic timelines. My current work explores the relationship between gesture and speech in child language acquisition, and examines the role gesture plays as language moves beyond the 2-word stage and complex grammatical constructions begin to emerge. My previous research involved the study of gestural communication and social cognition in orangutans. By combining results from both lines of inquiry, I hope to identify cognitive and communicative structures that exist prior to the development of full-blown language.

email: cartmill@uchicago.edu

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Dr. Ece Demir

My research focuses on the mechanisms behind children’s language development, particularly narrative and reading development. In order to get a more complete picture of these mechanisms, I explore how development proceeds in different learners (in typically-developing children, blind children and children with early unilateral brain injury) and in different environments (in different cultures, e.g. the USA, Turkey, China, and in different environments within a given culture, e.g. different home environments). In addition, I examine development on multiple levels of analyses. I focus on not only children’s speech, but also their gestures.

email: ece@uchicago.edu

(Also affiliated with Dr. Susan Levine)

Dr. Banchiamlack Dessalegn

My research focuses on understanding the interaction between language and nonlinguistic cognition. Specifically I focus on a specific interaction between vision and language and investigate the mechanism by which language affects visual processes (and vice versa), the representational consequence and development of such interactions.

email: Banchi@uchicago.edu

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Dr. Shannon Pruden

My current research explores when and how children acquire both the spatial concepts and words that map on to relational terms like motion verbs, spatial prepositions, and spatial adjectives. In my previous research I examined infants' ability to abstract spatial concepts that are eventually encoded in relational terms (e.g. path and manner). My current research continues this line of research and asks whether gesture plays a role in the acquisition of these spatial concepts and words.

email: spruden@uchicago.edu

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(Also affiliated with Dr. Susan Levine)