Research

At the Learning and Development Lab we investigate language learning with simple learning games designed to be fun and educational for children and adults. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about our research, or to participate in one of our studies. 

Studies with Adults

We are currently running studies of how people learn miniature artificial languages, and also how they learn other types of patterns. Most of these studies are done in our lab, on a computer, but some studies are run in a large scanner (harmless!) to observe the activity of the brain as people learn.

Amazon Mechanical Turk participants: View a description of our study here.

Studies with Children

We also study how children learn miniature artificial languages and other types of patterns, in order to understand why children are so good at learning and how they are the same or different from adult learners.

View a sample video clip from one of our language learning studies.

View a sample video clip from one of our pattern learning studies.

View our pamphlet: Wondering what your child is thinking? So are we.

For the last 34 years, Dr. Newport’s work has been funded through grants from the National Institutes of Health.