Research Interests & Abilities

• comprehension impairments
• pragmatics of language
• language acquisition
• development of comprehension
• assessment of discourse comp.
• developmental lang. impairment

Major Research Activities

The primary emphasis of my work over the last ten years
has been on the valid measurement of language in context
with particular emphasis upon the understanding of early
discourse comprehension. Comprehension ability is
notoriously difficult to measure in young children given
compliance issues. Valid measurement of early comprehension
is critical not only to our understanding of language
development in general, but also to our understanding of
language impairment and its long-term prognosis since the
latter is significantly different when both expressive and
receptive abilities rather than solely expressive abilities
are impaired. My funded work on early comprehension has resulted
in two new measures of early discourse comprehension,
the Joint Story Retell and Expectancy Violation Detection
Task which have been developed and evaluated
in my lab. These new measures of early discourse
comprehension seek to minimize the confounding memory
and language production demands associated with the
measurement of early comprehension, as well as address
other compliance issues that interfere with reliable evaluation.
Currently, I am involved in a project focussing on early
identification of language comprehension impairments in toddlers
and preschoolers. A microcomputer application for the evaluation of semantic
comprehension of toddlers has also been developed in my
laboratory. Additionally, I am involved in the identifying
language impairments in children with developmental coordination disorder.

CLLRNet Research Projects

• Investigation of the Processes Underlying Developmental Coordination Disorder and Learning Disability: Determining Optimal Diagnostic Measures

Last Modified: January 21 2002 14:50:15.