Keynote speakers
Michael H. Goldstein
Michael H. Goldstein
Associate Professor
Cornell University
Michael Goldstein is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D in developmental psychology and animal behavior from Indiana University. Michael studies the development and evolution of communication and social learning. He takes a comparative approach, investigating vocal communication and social development in human infants and songbirds. His research on the developmental processes by which knowledge of speech and song are acquired has revealed new mechanisms by which the social environment influences the learning of species-typical adaptive skills. By studying social interaction and learning as it occurs in moment-to-moment interactions between infants and social partners, Michael’s research connects our knowledge of social influences on developmental outcomes with specific processes of learning. A major finding from his work is that immature vocal behavior, such as babbling in humans and plastic song in songbirds, has crucial functional significance for learning, but only when studied in a social context. Michael received the David Kucharski Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology and the Distinguished Early Career Contribution Award from the International Society on Infant Studies. His research has been supported by grants from NICHD and NSF.
Charles Hulme
Charles Hulme
Professor
University of Oxford
Charles Hulme is Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Oxford and is a William Golding Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Charles has broad research interests in reading, language and memory processes and their development. He is an expert on randomized controlled trials in Education and has worked to develop a number of effective interventions for children’s language and reading difficulties. Publications include a number of assessment materials including the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (2009), the Phonological Abilities Test (1997), Sound Linkage (2014) and The Test of Basic Arithmetic and Numeracy Skills (2015) as well as several books dealing with reading development. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Scientific Studies of Reading’ (2007-2009) and is currently a Senior Editor of the Association of Psychological Science’s flagship journal, Psychological Science. In 2009 he published “Developmental disorders of language, learning and cognition” (Wiley-Blackwell; co-authored with Maggie Snowling). He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo (2014) and is a member of Academia Europea and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He received the Feitelson Research Award from the International Reading Association (1998) and the Marion Welchman International Award for Contributions to the study of Dyslexia from the British Dyslexia Association (2016). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.
Vsevolod Kapatsinski
Vsevolod Kapatsinski
Associate Professor
University of Oregon
Vsevolod Kapatsinski studied usage-based linguistics at the University of New Mexico (M.A., linguistics) followed by a deep dive into computational cognitive science at Indiana University (Ph.D., cognitive science and linguistics). Since 2009, he has headed the Usage-based Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Oregon, Department of Linguistics (blogs.uoregon.edu/ublab/). After an early focus on word frequency effects, his work has concentrated on identifying and testing the behavioral signatures of alternative learning mechanisms that could connect linguistic experience, language use and language change. Most of his research is concerned with morphology, phonology and the lexicon, with occasional forays into phonetics. He has argued that domain-general learning theory can provide insights into language acquisition and the recurrent pathways of language change. At the same time, data from language acquisition and change can also constrain learning theory, shedding light on such issues as the utilization of prediction error, category representation and the nature of automaticity. A recent summary can be found in his 2018 book, Changing minds changing tools: From learning theory to language acquisition to language change (MIT Press).
Cristina McKean
Cristina McKean
Senior Lecturer
Newcastle University
Cristina McKean is a speech and language therapist, senior lecturer and researcher based at Newcastle University, UK. She is Honorary Fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and Adjunct Fellow at the Menzies Institute Griffith University. Her research is driven and informed by her many years as a practitioner. She believes that high quality science can improve the lives of people with communication disorders and aims to support the speedy dissemination and application to practice of research through her role as Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Communication and Language Disorders. The primary focus of her research is understanding child language development and disorders, specifically understanding individual differences in the drivers and processes of developmental change for individual children. Her work is highly collaborative and she believes that the best work, both in research and practice is conducted through interdisciplinary collaboration. Cristina recently completed a Fellowship at the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language in Melbourne where she led work using the ELVS longitudinal cohort to explore the developmental trajectories of children with and without language difficulties to further our understanding of the emergence of language skills and difficulties across development and of the associated problems which many children with language disorders experience. She also conducts intervention and service delivery research.