 | ||
Janet werker
Janet Werker is a researcher in the field of developmental psychology. She researches the foundations of monolingual and bilingual infant language acquisition in infants at the University of British Columbia's Infant Studies Centre.
Contents
Werker received her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of British Columbia (1982). She is a Canada Research Chair professor at the University of British Columbia and is the recipient of the 2015 SSHRC Gold Medal.
Prof janet werker psychology
Research
Werker uses both behavioural and neuroimaging tasks to identify maturational milestones that make it possible for children to begin the process of language acquisition. She has investigated how maternal depression and treatment for it can affect timing of language development in children. Directions in future research include identifying whether expressions of ethnicity influence bilingual children's ability to keep their two languages distinct, and how watching talking faces, in addition to hearing speech, influences acquisition.
Biography
Werker completed her BA in psychology and social relations at Harvard University in 1976. She then went to the University of British Columbia for graduate work under Richard Tees. She attributes her interest in language acquisition to living in Vancouver, where most children grow up in bilingual households.
Werker has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Association for Psychological Science.