Welcome to the Infant Communication Lab

The Infant Communication Lab studies the development of gesture and language in infants and toddlers. We do this primarily by observing babies as they play with familiar adults in their own homes. To babies, our research is just playtime!

Our current projects focus on:

• Babies’ early vocalizations and their relationship to motor activity
  
• Changes in gesture use as children’s language develops
  
• Parents’ use of gestures when talking to their children
  
• Parents’ interpretation of their children’s gestures
  
• Early vocal, motor, and communicative development in infants at risk for Autism
  
  

Featured Research From Our Lab

• The interplay between language, affect, and gesture during communicative transition: A dynamic systems approach. 
  The vocabulary spurt impacts infants’ production of multiple, coordinated communicative behaviors.

• Developing language in a developing body: The relationship between motor development and language development.
  The emergence of new motor skills changes infants’ experiences with objects and people in ways that are relevant for communicative and language development.

  
• Variation in vocal-motor development in infant siblings of children with autism. Early motor and vocal development in high-risk infant siblings as an indicator of a future autism diagnosis.