General info about our research studies:

What are we studying?

We’re exploring the best ways to teach children new verbs. We also want to know if what is best depends on children’s current vocabularies – that is, where they are in the process of language development.

Why is it important?

Verbs are incredibly important to language learning, but they’ve received less attention in the past. Research suggests that the number of verbs a child knows at age 2 is an indicator of their grammar skills at age 3 (Hadley et al., 2016).

Also, there has not been much research on how late talkers learn language. However, we know that verb learning is harder for children with language delays and disorders than it is for their typically developing peers.

Understanding how late talkers learn new verbs will provide support for making therapy more effective.

How are we studying it?

We use new technology to study how children learn verbs. One of the methods that we use is an eye tracker, which captures children’s gaze as they watch videos. We use children’s gaze as an indication of how they are making sense of the language they hear.

Some of our studies feature videos of people doing unfamiliar actions, which we describe with made-up verbs. In other studies, children see familiar objects and actions, such as an apple or a person running, and are asked to “find” them from two possible choices. Here, we are using the eye tracker to assess where children are in the process of language learning.

To read a bit more about the eye tracker, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.