My graduate training at University of Southern California included working on a NICHD funded longitudinal study of the nature and stability of developmental dyslexia in children. Out of this work has grown a number of investigations of spoken language deficits in children with reading and/or language impairments including examining similarities in these individuals' grammatical and phonological awareness skills. A parallel interest has been the use of computational modeling to understand the role of biology and experience in reading and language development. I have also been applying neuroimaging (EEG, fMRI, DTI, fNIRS) and eyetracking methods to better understand how adults and children recognize language in real-time, and how individual differences in these abilities are reflected in the neural and cognitive mechanisms supporting language. More recently my laboratory has been using these same techniques to better understand the role of experience and maturation in second language learning and bilingualism.
