Jill de Villiers | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Professor Emerita of Psychology and Philosophy |
Awards | Elected Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Reading; Harvard University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Smith College |
Jill G. de Villiers (born 1948) is a developmental psychologist known for her work in the field of language acquisition. [1] She is the Sophia and Austin Smith Professor Emerita of Psychology and Philosophy at Smith College. [2] de Villiers is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. In 2018,she was elected as a Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [1]
de Villiers and her colleagues have developed critical tools for language assessment including the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS), [3] which is a computerized preschool language assessment,and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV),which aims to provide assessment for speakers of English dialects such as African-American English. [4] [5]
de Villiers completed her B.S. degree in psychology from the University of Reading in 1969. [2] She attended graduate school at Harvard University where she obtained her Ph.D in experimental psychology at 1974 under the supervision of Roger Brown. [6] After graduating,she taught at Harvard University for 8 years before moving to Smith College in 1971. At Smith,she received the Honored Professor award in 2003 and the Faculty Teaching award in 2002. [2]
de Villiers work focuses on language acquisition,with a specific focus on young children's ability to use words and sentences to communicate with others. Her many contributions include studies of language acquisition in oral deaf children [7] and relationships between language development and theory of mind. [8] [9] de Villiers' research has been funded by the March of Dimes, [10] National Science Foundation, [11] the Institute of Education Sciences, [12] and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. [13]
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words,it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language,to understand it,and to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain;that is,the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire,use,comprehend,and produce language.
Nicaraguan Sign Language is a form of sign language developed by deaf children in several schools in Nicaragua.
In psychology,theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. A theory of mind includes the knowledge that others' beliefs,desires,intentions,emotions,and thoughts may be different from one's own. Possessing a functional theory of mind is crucial for success in everyday human social interactions. People utilize a theory of mind when analyzing,judging,and inferring others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants. Factors including drug and alcohol consumption,language development,cognitive delays,age,and culture can affect a person's capacity to display theory of mind. Having a theory of mind is similar to but not identical with having the capacity for empathy or sympathy.
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing,conceptual resources,perceptual skill,language learning,and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize,understand,and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives,thinks,and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are,reasoning,intelligence,language,and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old,they play with toys,listen to their parents speak,they watch TV,anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.
In the field of psychology,nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view,which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs. This factor contributes to the ongoing nature versus nurture dispute,one borne from the current difficulty of reverse engineering the subconscious operations of the brain,especially the human brain.
Bilingual–Bicultural or Bi-Bi deaf education programs use sign language as the native,or first,language of Deaf children. In the United States,for example,Bi-Bi proponents state that American Sign Language (ASL) should be the natural first language for deaf children in the United States,although the majority of deaf and hard of hearing being born to hearing parents. In this same vein,the spoken or written language used by the majority of the population is viewed as a secondary language to be acquired either after or at the same time as the native language.
In linguistics,the innateness hypothesis,also known as the nativist hypothesis,holds that humans are born with at least some knowledge of linguistic structure. On this hypothesis,language acquisition involves filling in the details of an innate blueprint rather than being an entirely inductive process. The hypothesis is one of the cornerstones of generative grammar and related approaches in linguistics. Arguments in favour include the poverty of the stimulus,the universality of language acquisition,as well as experimental studies on learning and learnability. However,these arguments have been criticized,and the hypothesis is widely rejected in other traditions such as usage-based linguistics. The term was coined by Hilary Putnam in reference to the views of Noam Chomsky.
Domain-specific learning theories of development hold that we have many independent,specialised knowledge structures (domains),rather than one cohesive knowledge structure. Thus,training in one domain may not impact another independent domain. Domain-general views instead suggest that children possess a "general developmental function" where skills are interrelated through a single cognitive system. Therefore,whereas domain-general theories would propose that acquisition of language and mathematical skill are developed by the same broad set of cognitive skills,domain-specific theories would propose that they are genetically,neurologically and computationally independent.
Judith F. Kroll is a Distinguished Professor of Language Science at University of California,Irvine. She specializes in psycholinguistics,focusing on second language acquisition and bilingual language processing. With Randi Martin and Suparna Rajaram,Kroll co-founded the organization Women in Cognitive Science in 2001. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),the American Psychological Association (APA),the Psychonomic Society,the Society of Experimental Psychologists,and the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
John D. Bonvillian (1948-2018) was a psychologist and associate professor - emeritus in the Department of Psychology and the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville,Virginia. He is the principal developer of Simplified Signs,a manual sign communication system designed to be easy to form,easy to understand and easy to remember. He is also known for his research contributions to the study of sign language,child development,psycholinguistics,and language acquisition.
Glenn David McNeill is an American psychologist and writer specializing in scientific research into psycholinguistics and especially the relationship of language to thought,and the gestures that accompany discourse.
Hristo (Slavov) Kyuchukov or Christo Slavov Kütchukov is a German Muslim Rom,born in Bulgaria. He was born with the Muslim name Hyusein Selimov Kyuchukov,but in 1980-s his name was changed by the communist government of Bulgaria during the "bulgarization" process towards the Muslims in Bulgaria. He is a leading specialist in the field of Romani language and education of Roma children in Europe.
Katherine Nelson was an American developmental psychologist,and professor.
Attentional control,colloquially referred to as concentration,refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms,attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex,attentional control and attentional shifting are thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.
Robert J. Hoffmeister is associate professor emeritus and former director of the Center for the Study of Communication &Deafness at Boston University. He is most known for his book,Journey into the Deaf World. He is also known for supporting the American deaf community and deaf education.
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff holds the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education at the University of Delaware and is also a member of the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science.
Language acquisition is a natural process in which infants and children develop proficiency in the first language or languages that they are exposed to. The process of language acquisition is varied among deaf children. Deaf children born to deaf parents are typically exposed to a sign language at birth and their language acquisition follows a typical developmental timeline. However,at least 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who use a spoken language at home. Hearing loss prevents many deaf children from hearing spoken language to the degree necessary for language acquisition. For many deaf children,language acquisition is delayed until the time that they are exposed to a sign language or until they begin using amplification devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants. Deaf children who experience delayed language acquisition,sometimes called language deprivation,are at risk for lower language and cognitive outcomes. However,profoundly deaf children who receive cochlear implants and auditory habilitation early in life often achieve expressive and receptive language skills within the norms of their hearing peers;age at implantation is strongly and positively correlated with speech recognition ability. Early access to language through signed language or technology have both been shown to prepare children who are deaf to achieve fluency in literacy skills.
Stephanie M. Carlson is an American developmental psychologist whose research has contributed to scientific understanding of the development of children's executive function skills,including psychometrics and the key roles of imagination and distancing. Carlson is Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota,and co-founder of Reflection Sciences,Inc.
Rachel I. Mayberry is a language scientist known for her research on the effects of age of acquisition on sign language acquisition among deaf individuals –research that has provided evidence for a critical period in first language acquisition. She is Professor of Linguistics at University of California,San Diego (UCSD) and director of the Multimodal Language Lab.
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