Long before infants produce their first words, they have learned a tremendous amount about their native language(s). What do infants know, and how did they learn it? In this talk, I will describe results from multiple lines of research that suggest that infants learn by tracking statistical...

Bilingualism research has shown that the ability to focus one’s attention in the face of distraction develops earlier in bilingual children than in their monolingual peers (e.g., Bialystok, 1999; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008), and that lifelong bilingualism may protect older individuals from...

The words we use can provide a window into ourselves. A robust body of research has shown that people’s language use reflects their underlying social and psychological processes, such as their personality traits, mood, social status, relationship orientation, and even use of deception. These...