UCLA Language & Cognitive Development Lab

Mission Statement

The Langauge and Cognitive Development (LCD) Lab is directed by Catherine Sandhofer, PhD. Research in the LCD lab focuses on the relationship between children’s language learning environments and children’s word acquisition. We are interested in the idea that different kinds of parent input to children differentially engage domain-general processes such as memory and attention that ultimately affect how and what children learn. To this end, we primarily conduct three kinds of studies: Input studies designed to elucidate the nature of parents’ language input to children, longitudinal acquisition studies where we watch how children come to learn words, concepts, and categories over weeks and months, and training studies with which we examine how presenting children with a specific kind of input impacts children’s acquisition.