The Meaning & Language Development Lab, or MeLD lab, examines how we learn to building meaning with language, and how that ability changes as we grow. Children not only have to learn new words, but they also have to understand how those words fit together to express complex ideas, how an utterance's meaning depends upon the context in which it is uttered, and how listeners figure out what a speaker intends (especially when that intention goes beyond what the speaker literally said). Our work brings together three connected research themes: (i) how do learners acquire the meanings of words which play a scaffolding role in language, including logical operators such as or and not and propositional attitude verbs such as know and think, (ii) what other aspects of language development support the acquisition of these central words' meanings, and (iii) how children learn to "meld" minds with others in order to understand the interplay between what people say and what they want to achieve in a social interaction.

If you are interested in working in the lab or participating in our research, please contact us at meldlab-coordinator@ucsd.edu!