Haskins Laboratories: Seminar Series

Dear Colleagues of the Haskins Global Literacy Hub,

We are delighted to host the first in-person Haskins Seminar Series + Happy Hour since a formal MOU was signed between Yale Child Study Center, UConn Global, and UConn Waterbury in April 2024. This will happen on Sep. 19, 2024, Thursday, 3:30 pm ET, at UConn Waterbury.

Best,

Nicole Landi, PhD (UConn/Yale, Haskins)

Fumiko Hoeft, MD PhD (UConn, Haskins)

Haskins Seminar Series

LOCATION. UConn Waterbury, Multi-Purpose Room (MPR), Room 116/9, 99 E Main St, Waterbury, CT, 06702 To get to UConn parking using Google Maps, please use 55 N Elm St, Waterbury CT. Those with Area 2 parking at other campuses may park here for free. More info on parking can be found here.

HAPPY HOUR (post-lecture, self-sponsored). Grand St Tavern, 142 Grand St, Waterbury, CT, 06702.

Erin S. Isbilen PhD, Yale University.

Statistical learning and chunking shape spoken language and reading across development.

ABSTRACT. How do individuals acquire language in the face of its perceptual challenges? In this talk, I argue for the contribution of chunking—a basic memory process—to the statistical learning of language across the lifespan. My research illustrates how statistical learning and chunking work together to enable the acquisition of a variety of linguistic structures, and how proficiency in statistically-facilitated chunking predicts individual differences in speech processing. Such computations further extend to the learning of written regularities in both children and adults and even predict performance on established measures of reading. Together, these studies highlight the fundamental contribution of basic, domain-general computations to sophisticated linguistic abilities across modalities and development—both in the lab and in the real world.

SPEAKER BIO. Erin is an NIH K99 postdoctoral research associate in the Child Study Center at Yale. Her research focuses on the acquisition of spoken and written language in children and adults, with a focus on statistical learning and memory. Erin was formerly an NRSA postdoctoral research fellow at Haskins Laboratories working with Dick Aslin, and she completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University in the lab of Morten Christiansen, which was funded by the NSF GRFP. In 2023, Erin was awarded the Cognitive Science Society’s Glushko Dissertation Prize for her Ph.D. research.

FUTURE TALKS & HAPPY HOUR.

(1) Oct. 17, 2024, Thu 3:30p @ UConn Storrs, Nabin Koirala PhD

(2) Spring 2025, Thu 3:30p @ Yale Univ, Amy Margolis PhD.