Letitia Rose Gewirth Naigles is a developmental psychologist known for her contributions to the field of language acquisition, including work on syntactic bootstrapping and language development trajectories of children with autism. She is Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut and the director of the UConn Child Language Lab.[1]
Letitia Naigles | |
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| Citizenship | United States of America |
| Occupation | Professor of Psychological Sciences |
| Spouse | Mark Naigles (1960-2021) |
| Awards |
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| Academic background | |
| Education |
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| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Psychological Sciences |
| Institutions | University of Connicticut |
Naigles served as Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), and currently serves as a conference liaison.[2] She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Child Language [3].
In 2017, Naigles was awarded the University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research Award for the Biological and Life Sciences [2]. In 2019, she received the Research Excellence: Career Award from the University of Connecticut chapter of the American Association of University Professors.[4]
Biography
editLetitia R. Gewirth received her B.A. in Cognitive Science from Brown University in 1983. As an undergraduate, Gewirth co-author two research papers: "Altered patterns of word associations in dementia and aphasia[5]" in Brain and Language, and "A Reconsideration of acoustic Invariance for place of articulation[6]" in the The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. She was mentored by Aditi Lahrani and Sheila E Blumskin.
Naigles completed her M.A. and later her Ph.D in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. She defended her dissertation on "Syntactic bootstrapping as a procedure for verb learning" in 1988 under the guidance of Lila Gleitman.[7] In her thesis, she argued that young children use syntactic structure as clues the meaning of the words, especially verbs[8].
Naigles joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Yale University where she was Assistant Professor from 1988 to1994, and later Associate Rrofessor from 1994 to 1998. At Yale, Naigles was the advisor of the Philosophy track of undergraduate Psychology major, Trumbull College, and Mellon Minority Student Research Program. In 1998, Naigles moved to the University of Connecticut[1]
Naigles has been a guest columnist of the newsletter CCSTSG (Central Connecticut Star Trek Support Group)[9] Enterprises. She was mentioned in NY Times 1993 article " Analyzing Culture Though "Star Trek" where she was referenced that she wrote in the 1993 issue about using the "Star Trek" episodes to "draw analogy in her psychology classes."[9]
Naigles met her husband Mark as an undergraduate at Brown University. They were married from 1984 until he passed away in 2021.[10]Mark Naigles was a professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut.
Research
editNaigles's early work was on syntactic bootstrapping, investigating how children use group of words and syntactic structure to guess meaning of words. The study was published in 1990 in the Journal of Child Language. Children use syntax information to learn new verbs. Naigles used four experiments to test the hypothesis. In experiment 1 and 2, she asked children to use toys to convey the meaning of the verbs in grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. She found out that children as young as 30 months can use syntactic structure from incorrect sentences to guess the meaning. In experiments 3 and 4, she used the preferential looking paradigm where she presented children with sentences such as " The rabbit is gorping the duck" (transitive) and " The rabbit and the duck are gorping" (intransitive). In both examples the child guesses the meaning by using the group of words and the syntactic structure[7]. Naigles conducted research on the phenomenon of syntactic bootstrapping in different languages, including Mandarin Chinese[11], Hindi[1], Korean[1], Spanish[1], and Japanese[1]. Her work encompassed a diverse range of participants, including children and adults.
Naigles has been widely recognized in the field of autism research. In 2002, Naigles began shifting her research focus to language and cognitive development in children with autism. She has been engaged in an intensive longitudinal investigation of the language comprehension of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). She studied the pronoun reversal errors of the children with autism. Pronoun reversal occurs when a child may say " you" instead of "I" to refer to him/herself. This is an important aspect and may affect language and communication development[12]. Pronouns unlike nouns, they are very confusing to the child who is learning language. For example: the mother can call herself " mom", or "I", or "me", and that is difficult for the child to grasp and distinguish between the words. Pronoun reversal in children with autism relates to their social development[13].
Naigles also explored how language difficulties in children with autism relates to their social challenges. Children with autism struggles with social motivation and attention, and thus improving their focus on language through certain interventions could help their language skills develop normally, unless the child has inherent issues with language[14].
In addition to her work on language acquisition, Naigles has been involved in social justice work. She and her colleague Bede Agocha were awarded the UConn grant in 2020 to support work on anti-racist teaching. In collaboration with the Africana Studies Institute and the Cognitive Science Program, Naigles developed a course titled ‘Creation of a social-justice-focused undergraduate course: Language and Racism', focusing on the English language variant used by the people of African descent. The project aimed to help people understand how racism is maintained through communication[15].
Books and monographs
edit- Bavin, E. L. & Naigles, L. R. (Eds.) (2015). The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language. Cambridge University Press.
- Naigles, L. R. (Ed.) (2017). Innovative Investigations of Language in Autism Spectrum Disorder. American Psychological Association / De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110409871
- Naigles, L. R., Hoff, E. & Vear, D. (2009). Flexibility in early verb use: Evidence from a multiple-N diary study. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 74(2), vii-112. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.2009.00513.x PMID: 19660058
Other representative publications
edit- Gewirth, L. R., Shindler, A. G., & Hier, D. B. (1984). Altered patterns of word associations in dementia and aphasia. Brain and Language, 21(2), 307-317. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(84)90054-3
- Lahiri, A., Gewirth, L., & Blumstein, S. E. (1984). A reconsideration of acoustic invariance for place of articulation in diffuse stop consonants: Evidence from a cross‐language study. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 76(2), 391-404. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.391580
- Naigles, L., Cheng, M., Xu Rattasone, N., Tek, S., Khetrapal, N., Fein, D., & Demuth, K. (2016) “You’re telling me!” Prevalence and predictors of pronoun reversals in children with ASD and typical development. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 27, 11-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2016.03.008
- Naigles, L. R. (1996). The use of multiple frames in verb learning via syntactic bootstrapping. Cognition, 58(2), 221-251. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(95)00681-8
- Naigles, L. R. (2002). Form is easy, meaning is hard: Resolving a paradox in early child language. Cognition, 86(2), 157-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00177-4
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f "Home | UConn Child Language Lab". cll.research.uconn.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-17.
- ^ a b "Letitia Naigles". IASCL. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
- ^ "Journal of Child Language: Editorial Board".
- ^ "2019 UConn-AAUP Excellence Awards – UConn-AAUP". 2019-03-19. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
- ^ Gewirth, L. R., Shindler, A. G., & Hier, D. B. (1984). "Altered patterns of word associations in dementia and aphasia". Brain and Language. 21 (2): 307–317.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Lahiri, A., Gewirth, L., & Blumstein, S. E. (1984). "A reconsideration of acoustic invariance for place of articulation in diffuse stop consonants: Evidence from a cross‐language study". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 76 (2): 391–404.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Naigles, Letitia (1988). "Syntactic bootstrapping as a procedure for verb learning". University of Pennsylvania ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
- ^ Naigles, Letitia (1990). "Children use syntax to learn verb meanings". Journal of Child Language. 17 (2): 357–374.
- ^ a b NY Times (1993). "Analyzing Culture Through Star Trek".
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Mark Naigles". Hartford Courant. 2022-01-04. Retrieved 2024-10-03.
- ^ Lee, Naigles, Joanne, Letitia (2005). "The Input to Verb Learning in Mandarin Chinese: A Role for Syntactic Bootstrapping". Developmental Psychology. 41 (3): 529–540.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Naigles, L. R. (2016). "You're telling me!" The prevalence and predictors of pronoun reversals in children with autism spectrum disorders and typical development". Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. 27 (July): Pages 11-20.
- ^ "Questions for Letitia Naigles: Parsing pronoun confusion". The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives. 2016-06-07. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
- ^ Naigles, L. & Fein, D. (November 7, 2016). Innovative Investigations of Language in Autism. Walter deGruyter (published 7 November 2016). pp. 49–70. ISBN 978-3-11-040978-9.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Buckley, Christine (2020-09-28). "New CLAS Programs Support Anti-Racist Teaching, Research and Community Engagement". UConn Today. Retrieved 2024-10-28.