Children vary widely in language and cognitive abilities when they arrive at kindergarten. This variation is strongly associated with variations in their early language environments, and highly predictive of later literacy development and school success. 

I have developed and pursued a research program aimed at further understanding the role of parent and family factors in child language development. My work is guided by a social-interactionist theoretical perspective, which emphasizes the important role that language experience plays in language and cognitive development. My research program is focused on several related goals:

1. Understanding how and why parents’ and children’s gestures predict language development.

2. Understanding the features of caregiver-child communication that predict language (and math) skills across early development.

3. Understanding why parents vary so much in how they communicate with their children.

4. Understanding effective ways to provide students, parents, and teachers with information about child development.

Taken together, this program of research has practical implications for parenting as well as more theoretical implications for how children learn from their communicative interactions with others.