Research at the Development, Experience, and Neurocognition Lab addresses the long-standing question of why some children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, fall behind their peers in academic achievement while others thrive. We take several major approaches to address this broad question. We combine behavioral methods that illuminate children’s home experiences with neuroimaging measures that reveal the neurocognitive basis of children’s academic performance. Our research leverages naturalistic, longitudinal observations and experimental designs to examine how the early parental input in the home environment relates to children’s later literacy and arithmetic skills. We examine the role of family factors in both typically-developing children as well as in children with atypical developmental trajectories, such as in children with early brain injury. We complement this approach with structural and functional neuroimaging measures to analyze how parental background and parental input relate to the neurocognitive basis of children’s literacy and arithmetic skills, and how these neurocognitive correlates, in turn, relate to children’s academic success.

Recent publications