Language Development

An accessible introduction to language development aimed at a wide audience of students from different disciplines such as psychology, behavioural science, linguistics, cognitive science, and speech pathology. It requires only minimal knowledge of psychology, and is intended for undergraduates from the second year of studies onwards. The wide accessibility to undergraduates is achieved by avoiding technical terminology when possible and explaining all crucial concepts in the text.

From the first moment of life, language development occurs in the context of social activities. This book emphasises how language development interacts with social and cognitive development, and shows how these abilities work together to turn children into sophisticated language users--a process that continues well beyond the early years. Covering the breadth of contemporary research on language development, Brooks and Kempe illustrate the methodological variety and multi-disciplinary character of the field, presenting recent findings with reference to major theoretical discussions. Through their clear and accessible style, readers are given an authentic flavour of the complexities of language development research.

With such research advancing at a rapid pace, Language Development uncovers new insights into a variety of areas such as the neurophysiological underpinnings of language, the language processing capabilities of newborns, and the role of genes in regulating this amazing human ability.

About the Author:

Patricia Brooks is a Professor at the College of Staten Island. She conducts research in the areas of language development in children, second language learning in adults, and speech production and comprehension. On-going research projects explore (1) speech perception in children with Autism, (2) lexical access in children with Specific Language Impairment, (3) individual differences in adult second language learning, and (4) comprehension errors in sentence processing. Dr. Brooks joined the CSI faculty in 1997 after completing post-doctoral fellowships at Carnegie Mellon University and Emory University. She was appointed to the CUNY Graduate Center faculty in 1999, and is active in the Ph.D. programs in Developmental Psychology and Cognition, Brain & Behavior.

Vera Kempe is a Professor and Chair in Psychology of Language Learning at the University of Abertay, Dundee. She has held posts at Carnege Mellon University, the University of Toledo, SUNY Oswego, and the University of Stirling. She has published extensively within her research areas, which include: the role of child-directed speech in language acquisition; crosslinguistic research and neural network modeling of language learning and processing; first and second language vocabulary acquisition and learning of inflectional morphology; Individual differences in language learning and in child-directed speech; emotion and communication.