معرفی
Leah Kapa, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona. She earned her PhD in Child Language from the University of Kansas and completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona prior to joining the faculty. Her research focuses on the interplay between language and cognition in both typically developing individuals and those with developmental language disorders, emphasizing how cognitive skills like memory and attention influence language processing and vice versa.
Dr. Kapa's educational background includes a postdoctoral fellowship focused on neurodevelopmental research and a doctorate specializing in child language mechanisms. Her work bridges developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical speech-language pathology.
Her research interests center on understanding how executive function abilities (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control) interact with language acquisition and processing in diverse populations. This includes studying preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD) to identify cognitive predictors of treatment outcomes and language learning potential. She also explores how bilingualism impacts executive function development in children.
Dr. Kapa teaches courses such as Language Science, Phonetics for Clinical Practice, and Foundations of Cognition, integrating clinical and theoretical perspectives. Her laboratory, the Language and Cognition Lab, investigates neurocognitive mechanisms underlying language and cognitive development.
Her recent publications highlight trends in examining executive function's role in language interventions for DLD, predictors of treatment response, and neurodevelopmental impacts of early language disorders. Ongoing work explores the efficacy of task adaptations for cognitive assessments and the relationship between science vocabulary and academic achievement in clinical populations.
Dr. Kapa's research spans experimental studies of statistical learning, longitudinal cognitive assessments, and translational clinical applications. Her work aims to inform diagnostic tools and intervention strategies for developmental language disorders.
