TITLE
Developing Language in a Developing Body: Interactions and Cascading Effects
ABSTRACT
In this talk, Dr. Jana Iverson will present findings from two lines of research designed to illustrate ways in which advances in motor skills provide foundational opportunities and experiences that benefit communicative and language development. The first demonstrates how movement organizes experiences relevant for language learning. The second illustrates how movement shapes infants’ social interactions with objects and people in ways that generate rich language input beneficial for language development. Together, these findings reveal how the achievement of new motor skills exerts far-reaching, cascading effects on development that extend beyond the individual to impact the behavior of social partners and the broader communicative environment. Improving our understanding of the dynamic linkages between early motor and communicative development in the context of the constant, complex interplay between developing communicators and their environments will advance theory and research on early communicative and language development. It will also suggest novel targets for intervention for infants and toddlers with communication delays and challenges.
BIO
Dr. Jana Iverson is Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research, funded by NICHD, NIDCD, and Autism Speaks, focuses primarily on the interface between the development of early motor skills and the emergence of communication and language in typical development and in children with or at risk for developmental disorders. Dr. Iverson has published a co-edited book and more than 90 articles and book chapters. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Child Language, Language Learning and Development, and Infancy. Since 1991, she has served as an international investigator at the CNR in Rome, Italy. Dr. Iverson was awarded the University of Pittsburgh’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award in 2007 and the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018. She was recently named a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
