Child Language Laboratory
Led by Dr. Liat Seiger-Gardner, the Child Language Lab focuses on word-finding difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Treating children with word-finding difficulties as well as the scarcity of remedial programs in this area motivated Dr. Seiger-Gardner’s research. Her research examines the organization of the mental lexicon in children with SLI and seeks to pinpoint the possible loci of breakdowns in their lexical access and processing that underlie word-finding difficulties.
In her research, Dr. Seiger-Gardner applies both online and offline measures. On-line techniques (i.e., the picture-word interference paradigm) provide information about the timing at which semantic and phonological information become available during lexical access and permit the investigation of semantic and phonological processing on a moment-by-moment basis.
Dr. Seiger-Gardner's research has focused on two fronts, the semantic organization of the mental lexicon in SLI and the phonological processing of words in SLI. Included among the populations being studied are monolingual children with SLI, children with phonological impairments and semantic deficits, and children with typical language development, all ranging in age from 5 to 11 years old. In the near future we expect to expand our research to children with autism, and bilingual children with and without SLI.