Letitia Naigles

Letitia Naigles is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut. She serves as Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Child Language and leads the UConn Child Language Lab. Her research focuses on language acquisition across diverse populations, including typically developing children and those with autism spectrum disorders. She examines how linguistic input interacts with innate cognitive, neurological, and social factors to shape language development.

Naigles holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (1988). Her work spans theoretical and applied domains, addressing cross-linguistic variations in language acquisition and neurobiological underpinnings of developmental language disorders. She has held visiting appointments at the MIND Institute and Koç University, Turkey.

Her awards include Fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science (2009). She has secured research funding from NIH, NSF, and other agencies, focusing on topics such as grammatical impairment in autism and longitudinal language profiles in developmental disorders. Her teaching includes courses on developmental psychology, language acquisition, and the neurobiology of language.

Naigles’ research group, the UConn K.I.D.S. (Kids in Developmental Science), collaborates internationally to explore language mechanisms in diverse populations. Her publications bridge cognitive science, linguistics, and clinical applications, advancing understanding of both typical and atypical language development.