Lab for Applied Language Science
Mission
The Lab for Applied Language Science (LALS) is open for anybody who is interested in language development and language use. We aim to offer opportunities for novel interdisciplinary collaborations among linguists, language teachers, psychologists, speech pathologists, social scientists, educational tool developers, speech engineers, etc. and to provide training for researchers and students who wish to develop skills in experimental approaches to language science.
LALS conducts psycholinguistic research on:
- First language development in young and school-age children
- Language processing in adolescents, young, middle-age and aging adults
- Second/Foreign language acquisition in children and adults
- Language development and processing in clinical populations
The above missions motivate research studies such as:
- Speech perception and/or sentence processing in children, adults and individuals with clinical conditions (e.g., developmental disorder, hearing impairment, dementia, etc.)
- Grammatical development in school-age children and children with developmental disorders
- Effect of specific types of training on second/foreign language processing
- Individuals’ cognitive abilities and their language processing skills
The application goals of these research include (but are not limited to):
- Construction of language skill database for school-age children
- Evaluations of interventions for communication development
- Comparative assessments of foreign language pedagogies
- Development of age- and condition-specific communication tools
LALS is open to:
- Researchers who want to test their scientific hypotheses in the areas related to language and language use
- Students who want to learn experimental methods in language science
- Educators and clinicians who wish to obtain empirical data on the language skills of specific populations
- Those who plan to develop language education/assessment/training materials based on empirical evidence for efficacy
- Developers of condition-specific communication tools
Eye tracker demo
Members
Associate Professor Kiwako Ito
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Director of LALS
School of Humanities and Social Science
Chelsea Harris
2020 FEDUA Undergraduate Intern
Linguistics Major
Alex Cowan
Honors Student Research Assistant
Linguistics Major
Suzan Makhloof
PhD Student
Project Collaborators
Project Title: Individuals’ memory and their ability to process grammar: A comparative eye-tracking study
Associate Professor Kylie Shaw
Associate Professor of Education
School of Education, The University of Newcastle
Dr Traci Flynn
Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology
School of Humanities and Social Science, The University of Newcastle
Associate Professor Chie Nakamura
Associate Professor in English Language Education in Science and Engineering
Waseda University, Tokyo
Global Center for Science and Engineering
Dr. Jongmin Jung
Post-doctoral researcher
Hallyum University, South Korea
Bethany Frick
PhD student
Clinical Fellow - Speech Language Pathology at Haugland Therapy Services
The Ohio State University
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.