Cognitive, Perceptual, and Language Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Cognitive, Perceptual, and Language Development

The University of Wisconsin-Madison

The University of Wisconsin offers a rich interdisciplinary environment for the study of cognitive, perceptual and language development. Our graduate programs provide students an array of options for research, study, and professional development.

Particular strengths of our departments and faculty include:

A focus on contexts of development, such as instructional, family and peer contexts.
A focus on developmental processes and mechanisms of change.
Studies of both typical and atypical development.
Expertise in a number of research methods, including experimental and observational studies and modeling.

The University of Wisconsin is also home to several national research centers:

Waisman Center
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science
National Institute for Science Education

Faculty in Cognitive, Perceptual, and Language Development

Leonard Abbeduto

Professor, Educational Psychology

Interests: Pragmatic dimensions of language development, and how they are shaped by cognitive, social-cognitive, and personality factors.

Martha W. Alibali

Assoc. Professor, Psychology**

Interests: The development of mathematical reasoning skills, and the roles of language and gesture in learning and knowledge change.

Susan Ellis Weismer

Professor, Communicative Disorders

Interests: A limited processing capacity account of specific language delay in late talking toddlers and school-age children with language impairment.

Julia Evans

Asst. Professor, Communicative Disorders*

Interests: Using principles from dynamical systems theory to model language processing deficits, and understanding the role a language impairment plays in embodied cognitive development.

Charles Kalish

Professor, Educational Psychology*

Interests: The development of commonsense theories and causal reasoning, the role of causal knowledge in inductive inference and categorization.

Keith R. Kluender

Professor, Psychology

Interests: Development of speech perception as a function of experience in different language environments.

Linda Marshall

Asst. Professor, Child and Family Studies

Interests: The role of the family in the development of children's strategic communication, and how communication skills acquired in the home translate to interactions with teachers and peers.

Jon Miller

Professor, Communicative Disorders

Interests: The relationship between cognition and language development in children with Down syndrome, Fragile X, and Turner's syndrome.

Colleen Moore

Professor, Psychology

Interests: Understanding how children's intuitive understanding of a problem guides their formal problem solving, using methods including math models, protocol analysis, and decision tasks.

Mitchell Nathan

Assoc Professor, Educational Psychology

Interests: Mathematical cognition, strategies for effective mathematics education, transition to algebraic thinking

Susan Naeve-Velguth

Asst. Professor, Communicative Disorders

Interests: Early communicative development in infants with normal hearing and those with hearing loss, and the acquisition of American Sign Language in deaf children of Deaf parents.

Jenny Saffran

Assoc. Professor, Psychology

Interests: Infant learning abilities, especially those involved in language acquisition, and the relations between learning biases and the structure of language.

*Joint appointment with Department of Psychology

**Joint appointment with Department of Educational Psychology

For more information about graduate study at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison please contact:

Department of Psychology

W. J. Brogden Hall

1202 West Johnson Street

Madison, WI 53706-1696

Ph: 608-262-0512

http://psych.wisc.edu/

Department of Educational Psychology

1025 West Johnson Street