معرفی
Ann Senghas is a Professor of Psychology at Barnard College and Director of the Language Acquisition and Development Laboratory, where she has taught developmental psychology and language acquisition courses since joining the faculty in 1999.
Education:
- B.A., Smith College
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Her research centers on language acquisition, cognitive development, and language evolution, with a primary focus on Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). She investigates how deaf children and adolescents in Nicaragua create grammatical structures from disordered input, examining the interplay between spatial cognition, gesture, and linguistic development across the lifespan through longitudinal fieldwork.
Analysis of her publications from 2002-2010 reveals consistent exploration of NSL's emergence, covering spatial grammar, deixis, motion events, and the cognitive foundations of language. Her work bridges sign language studies with broader questions about linguistic recursion, false-belief understanding, and the relationship between language structure and cognitive development.
Scientific Awards:
- Frontiers of Science Fellow Award from the National Academies of Science and Engineering
Professor Senghas' research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, with annual six-week fieldwork expeditions to Nicaragua for data collection. Her laboratory trains undergraduate researchers in linguistic documentation and analysis while maintaining active collaborations with international institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
The Language Acquisition and Development Laboratory serves as the operational hub for her Nicaraguan fieldwork, housing video archives of sign language evolution and supporting cross-linguistic comparisons between emerging and established sign languages through systematic coding and analysis frameworks.
