Jessica Lena Montag

Jessica Lena Montag serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, with concurrent appointments at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), plus affiliate status at the Center for Social & Behavioral Science.

Her research investigates language acquisition and processing across developmental stages, specializing in child-directed speech patterns, picture book interactions with infants, bilingual language development, and computational modeling of vocabulary growth. Methodologically, she integrates naturalistic recording (using EAR technology), corpus linguistics, and cognitive experiments to examine how environmental exposure shapes linguistic competence.

Recent publications (2022-2025) reveal consistent focus on early language exposure mechanisms, with emerging trends in digital survey methodologies for infant-caregiver interactions and computational approaches to vocabulary acquisition. Her work bridges psychological theory with advanced computational resources through NCSA collaborations.

• JSMF Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition (2018)
• Psychonomic Society Fellow (2024)

Dr. Montag's interdisciplinary collaborations span cognitive science, linguistics, and computer science teams, particularly through Beckman Institute initiatives examining language processing in natural contexts. Her research leverages supercomputing infrastructure for large-scale language data analysis while maintaining developmental psychology foundations.