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Program Faculty

SDSU Doctoral Program Faculty:

• Jessica Barlow, Ph.D.(Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Phonological theory. Also, speech perception and production in various populations including second-language learners and children with speech disorders.
• Li-Rong Cheng, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comm., ethnographic research on comm. and communication disorders, code-switching, socialization and strategies in acculturation in second lang. acquisition.
• Soonja Choi, Ph.D. (Linguistics)
  Crosslinguistic comparisons of language development, relations between language and cognition in early development of grammar.
• Karen Emmorey, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Research interests include the study of signed languages and how it provides a window into the nature of human language, into the relation between language and spatial cognition, and into the determinants of brain organization for language.
• Julia Evans, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Research focuses on processing deficits in school-aged children with language learning disorders including how changes in external processing demands affect real-time language processing at phonological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels in both typically developing children and children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). Research paradigms include behavioral experiments, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging (ERP and fMRI) approaches.
• Margaret Friend, Ph.D. (Psychology)
  Developmental psychology, processes of language comprehension and the developmental relation between language and emotion in communication.
• Vera Gutierrez-Clellen, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Processes of bilingual lang. acquisition and literacy in normal and L/LD children, relationships b/w socialization processes and lang. develop. in linguistic minority children.
• Tracy Love, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Language processing in both language impaired and language unimpaired child and adult populations. Focuses on examining the nature of the information used during on-going language and cognitive processing.
• Ralph-Axel Mueller, Ph.D. (Psychology)
  Brain Development Imaging investigates the plasticity of the brain organization for language in healthy children, children and adults with focal brain lesion, and in patients with autistic disorders.
• Marilyn Newhoff, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Research interests include language, cognition and attention in typical and atypical language systems. Focus is on behavioral and brain imaging techniques.
• Judy Reilly, Ph.D. (Psychology)
  Interface of linguistic and affective facial expression in normal deaf infants acquiring sign language as their first language, expression of affect in communicatively disordered populations.
• Lewis Shapiro, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  On-line lexical, syntactic and cognitive processing in normal and neurologically-impaired populations. The study of brain-language relations. Neuroimaging and neurophysiology. The application of linguistic theory to treatment of language deficits.
• Beverly Wulfeck, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences)
  Language, cognition and attention in normally-developing children and adults and in adults with aphasia and children high risk for language impairment. Focus is on real-time processing and brain imaging techniques to examine neural correlates of language and cognitive processing in typical and atypical populations

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) :

• Farrell Ackerman, Ph.D.(Linguistics)
  Research interests center on interface between morphology and syntax. Viewed from a lexicalist perspective, whereby information associated with lexical representations is a central ingredient in grammatical explanation.
• Ursula Bellugi, Ed.D. (Salk Institute, Psychology)
  (1) Research on American Sign Language (the nature of ASL, its acquisition by children, processing in normal adults, organization in the brain); (2) Research linking cognition, brain and molecular genetics in genetic syndromes such as Williams Syndrome and Down Syndrome.
• Leslie Carver, Ph.D. (Psychology)
  Research on the brain basis of cognitive and social cognitive development using behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures.
• Seana Coulson, Ph.D. (Cognitive Science)
  Research addresses the cognitive and neural basis of meaning construction using linguistic, behavioral, and electrophysiological (ERP) techniques. Interests include embodied metaphor theory and the comprehension of jokes, sarcasm, and iconic gestures.
• Gedeon Deak, Ph.D.(Cognitive Science).
  Research interests include cognitive and language development in preschool children including, for example, children's ability to name or categorize an entity differently across situations, or to shift responses across changing problem. Also, how preschoolers learn the meanings of related words. A third line is infant communication, specifically the emergence and development of episodes of shared attention between infants and caregivers.
• Nina Dronkers, Ph.D., (Center for Research in Language)
  Research interests include Aphasia, Cerebral localization of language, Language of Dementia, and other cognitive deficits resulting from brain injury.
• Jeff Elman, Ph.D., (Cognitive Science)
  Center for Research in Language. Research on neural network models of natural language.
• Victor Ferreira, Ph.D. (Psychology)
  Research interests include investigations of the mechanisms of language production, computational and quantitative modeling of cognitive processes, and development of methodological tools for investigation of cognitive and perceptual processes.
• Eric Halgren, Ph.D. (Neurosciences)
  Research into the neural mechansisms of language and other cognitive processes, using magnetoencephalography, intracranial recordings in humans, and other techniques.
• Mark Kritchevsky, M.D. (Neurosciences)
  Behavioral neurologist and neurologic educator. Sees patients with deficits of higher brain functions and with problems in the overlap between neurology and psychiatry. Teaches Basic Neurology course in the Spring quarter. Also teaches each year a clinical neurology tutorial and courses in behavioral neurology and general clinical neurology.
• Marta Kutas , Ph.D. (Cognitive Science)
  Research on the neural basis of human information processing; studies of language comprehension and semantic memory using event-related potentials (ERPs).
• Rachel Mayberry, Ph.D. (Linguistics)
  First- and second-language acquisition in children and adults with an emphasis on age of acquisition effects on language knowledge and processing. Psycholinguistics of sign language, speech-gesture, and reading development in deaf and hearing populations.
• John Moore, Ph.D. (Linguistics)
  Research interests are in syntactic theory, primarily within Government and Binding. Also interested in cross-framework comparisons. Worked on lexical semantics, as it relates to causative constructions.
• Carol Padden, Ph.D. (Communications)
  Research on American Sign Language, development of ASL, development of English literacy skills in deaf children.
• Jeanne Townsend, Ph.D. (Neurosciences)
  The focus of research is the identification of brain structural and functional correlates of cognitive function, particularly the bases of attentional processes, and developmental changes in these relationships. Employ a variety of methods and techniques including neuropsychological and behavioral testing, neurophysiological recordings (EEG, ERP), structural and functional MR imaging.
• Doris Trauner, M.D. (Neurosciences)
  Cognitive development in children with early focal brain damage, genetic and metabolic disorders; plasticity in the developing human nervous system.
  

last updated: 8/21/07