Katherine White

Katherine White is a Professor specializing in developmental research, particularly focusing on infant and toddler language acquisition. She leads the Developmental Research Area and directs the Lab for Infant Development and Language. Her academic background includes a BA from Cornell University and a PhD from Brown University.

Her research investigates how infants and toddlers perceive and learn speech sounds, process linguistic variability (e.g., accents, disfluencies), and integrate social cues with linguistic information. Key topics include the impact of speaker identity, visual speech cues, and sociolinguistic factors on early language development. She has pioneered studies on accent adaptation, phonological biases, and the role of disfluencies in word learning.

Her work often employs large-scale collaborative projects like ManyBabies 5 to investigate universal developmental patterns. She emphasizes methodological rigor, particularly addressing experimenter identity as a confounding variable in developmental studies. The Lab for Infant Development and Language uses advanced tools like SMART-T for anticipatory eye-tracking paradigms to study real-time language processing in infants.

Publications span topics from phonetic category acquisition to the sociolinguistic dimensions of childhood language use, with contributions to understanding how children navigate linguistic diversity and social context.