Jane B. Childers

Jane B. Childers is a Professor of Psychology at Trinity University where she chairs the Linguistics program and serves as faculty adviser for RUF and the PDK sorority. Her research focuses on developmental psychology, specifically how children learn verbs between ages 2-5 across cultures using behavioral enactment, video, and eye tracking methodologies.

Dr. Childers earned her B.A. in Psychology from Baylor University (1990), M.A. in Developmental Psychology with linguistics minor from UT Austin (1994), and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from UT Austin (1998), followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University (1998-2000).

Her research examines how children use comparative event information to learn new verbs, with cross-cultural studies spanning English, Mandarin, Korean, and Nigerian contexts. She teaches courses exploring fundamental developmental questions about the origins of human thought, developmental influences from social contexts, and language learning as a window into cognition. Her Children's Research Lab engages undergraduate students in meaningful research while providing child development information to local families.

Dr. Childers' publication record from 1997-2022 reveals a methodological evolution from foundational speech perception studies to sophisticated cross-linguistic verb acquisition research. Her work consistently explores how children process events during language learning, with increasing attention to cross-cultural variability and visual attention mechanisms.

• Z.T. Scott award for mentor-based approach in classroom and lab (2022)

As principal investigator on an NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award (R15) from 2010-2013 ($199,600), she investigated how comparison develops in verb learning. She actively mentors undergraduates through the Children's Research Lab, which serves as the hub for her research on child language development using behavioral, video, and eye tracking methodologies.

The Children's Research Lab employs undergraduate researchers to investigate verb learning mechanisms through behavioral enactment, video analysis, and eye tracking procedures, examining how children compare multiple events to acquire new verbs across cultural contexts.