The Infant Language Center at the University of Pennsylvania studies how language develops in infants and toddlers. Our primary goal is to better understand how children acquire language. Our studies take place at the University of Pennsylvania at the new beautiful state of the art Levin building. We would love to host you and your child’s visit.
Sign your baby up today.
5 mo 15 days — 6 mo 31 days
6 mo — 7 mo 31 days
9 mo — 10 mo 31 days
10 mo — 10 mo 31 days (first visit); 13 mo — 14 mo 31 days (second visit)
14 mo — 15 mo 31 days
16 mo — 19 mo 31 days
20 mo — 23 mo 31 days
24 mo — 29 mo 31 days
Publications
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (in press, 2017). Young infants’ word comprehension given an unfamiliar talker or altered pronunciations. Child Development. 10.1111/cdev.12888 pdf
Adriaans, F., & Swingley, D. (2017). Prosodic exaggeration within infant-directed speech: consequences for vowel learnability. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141, 3070-3078. pdf data
Swingley, D., & Humphrey, C. (2017). Quantitative linguistic predictors of infants’ learning of specific English words. Child Development, 10.1111/cdev.12731. pdf data
Swingley, D. (2017). Commentary: The infant’s developmental path in phonological acquisition. British Journal of Psychology, 108, 28-30. 10.1111/bjop.12215 pdf
Swingley, D. (2016). Two-year-olds interpret novel phonological neighbors as familiar words. Developmental Psychology, 52, 1011-1023. doi 10.1037/dev0000114 pdf
Dautriche, I., Swingley, D., & Christophe, A. (2015). Learning novel phonological neighbors: syntactic category matters. Cognition, doi 10.1016/j.bcognition.2015.06.003 pdf
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (online 2014). Early word comprehension in infants: replication and extension. Language Learning and Development, doi 10.1080/15475441.2014.979387 pdf
Quam, C., & Swingley, D. (2014). Bunny? Banana? Processing of lexical-stress cues in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 123, 73-89. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.01.010 pdf
Do young children use lexical stress to help differentiate stress-varying words? And, do they use pitch as a cue in doing so? Pitch is complicated, being used for many things; perhaps kids haven’t sorted this out yet.
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2013). Young toddlers’ word comprehension is flexible and efficient. Plos ONE, 8, 1-9. doi:0.1371/ journal.pone.0073359 pdf
Studies showing that in visual-world, “language-guided looking” situations, toddlers don’t simply respond according to picture-driven expectations. They hear speech, interpret it, and scan the world accordingly.
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2013). The acquisition of abstract words by young infants. Cognition, 127, 391-397. pdf
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2013). Social and environmental contributors to infant word learning. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 187-192. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. pdf
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (Feb. 2012). At 6 to 9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 109, 3253-3258. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1113380109 pdf
Swingley, D. (2012). Cognitive development in language acquisition. Language Learning and Development, 8, 1-3. pdf
Quam, C., & Swingley, D. (2012). Development in children’s interpretation of pitch cues to emotions. Child Development, 83, 246-250. pdf
Adriaans, F., & Swingley, D. (2012). Distributional learning of vowel categories is supported by prosody in infant-directed speech. In Miyake, Peebles, & Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 72-77). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. pdf
Lupyan, G., & Swingley, D. (2012). Self-directed speech affects visual search performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 1068-1085.pdf
Van der Feest, S. V., & Swingley, D. (2011). Dutch and English listeners’ interpretation of vowel duration. JASA Express Letters, 129, EL57-63. pdf
Swingley, D. (2011). The looking-while-listening procedure. In E. Hoff (ed.), Research Methods in Child Language (pp. 29-42), Wiley-Blackwell. pdf
Swingley, D. (2010). Fast mapping and slow mapping in children’s word learning. Language Learning and Development, 6, 179-183. pdf
Quam, C., & Swingley, D. (2010). Phonological knowledge guides two-year-olds’ and adults’ interpretation of salient pitch contours in word learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 135-150. pdf
Lupyan, G., Thompson-Schill, S.L., & Swingley, D. (2010). Conceptual penetration of visual processing. Psychological Science, 21, 682-691. pdf SOM (note: Fig.1 may not display properly under Preview; try Adobe Reader.)
Swingley, D. (2009). Contributions of infant word learning to language development. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 3617-3622. pdf
A review paper discussing how word learning in the first year bears on concurrent and subsequent developments in language acquisition. Proposes that the learning of phonetic categories may depend on contributions from the developing lexicon, and offers new analyses supporting this possibility.
Goudbeek, M., Smits, R., & Swingley, D. (2009). Supervised and unsupervised learning of multidimensional auditory categories. JEP:HPP, 35, 1913-1933. pdf
Swingley, D. (2009). Onsets and codas in 1.5-year-olds’ word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 252-269. pdf
Ramon-Casas, M., Swingley, D., Bosch, L., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2009). Vowel categorization during word recognition in bilingual toddlers. Cognitive Psychology, 59, 96-121. pdf
Yoshida, K., Fennell, C., Swingley, D., & Werker, J.F. (2009). 14-month-olds learn similar-sounding words. Developmental Science, 12, 412-418. pdf
Swingley, D. (2008). The roots of the early vocabulary in infants’ learning from speech. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 308-312. pdf
Dietrich, C., Swingley, D., & Werker, J.F. (2007). Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 104, 454-464. Available here
Swingley, D. (2007). Lexical exposure and word-form encoding in 1.5-year-olds. Developmental Psychology, 43, 454-464. pdf
Swingley, D., & Aslin, R.N. (2007). Lexical competition in young children’s word learning. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 99-132. pdf
Swingley, D. (2005). 11-month-olds’ knowledge of how familiar words sound. Developmental Science, 8, 432-443. pdf
Swingley, D. (2005). Statistical clustering and the contents of the infant vocabulary. Cognitive Psychology, 50, 86-132. pdf
Goudbeek, M., Smits, R., Swingley, D., & Cutler, A. (2005). Acquiring auditory and phonetic categories. In H. Cohen & C. Lefebvre (Eds.), Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, Elsevier.
Swingley, D. (2003). Phonetic detail in the developing lexicon. Language and Speech, 46, 265-294. pdf
Swingley, D. and Aslin, R.N. (2002). Lexical neighborhoods and the word-form representations of 14-month-olds. Psychological Science, 13, 480-484. pdf
Swingley, D. and Fernald, A. (2002). Recognition of words referring to present and absent objects by 24-month-olds. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 39-56. pdf
Fernald, A., McRoberts, G.W., and Swingley, D. (2001). Infants’ developing competence in recognizing and understanding words in fluent speech. In J. Weissenborn & B. Hoehle (eds.) Approaches to bootstrapping: Phonological, lexical, syntactic, and neurophysiological aspects of early language acquisition (Vol. I, pp. 97-123). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Fernald, A., Swingley, D., and Pinto, J.P. (2001). When half a word is enough: infants can recognize spoken words using partial phonetic information. Child Development, 72, 1003-1015. pdf
Swingley, D. and Aslin, R.N. (2000) Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children. Cognition, 76, 147-166. pdf
Dahan, D., Swingley, D., Tanenhaus, M.K., and Magnuson, J.S. (2000). Linguistic gender and spoken word recognition in French. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 465-480.
Swingley, D. (1999). Conditional probability and word discovery: A corpus analysis of speech to infants. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 724-729). Mahwah, NJ.: LEA.pdf
Swingley, D., Pinto, J.P., and Fernald, A. (1999). Continuous processing in word recognition at 24 months. Cognition, 71, 73-108.
Swingley, D., Pinto, J.P., and Fernald, A. (1998). Assessing the speed and accuracy of word recognition in infants. Advances in Infancy Research, 12, pp. 257-277.
Fernald, A., Pinto, J.P., Swingley, D., Weinberg, A., and McRoberts, G. (1998). Rapid gains in speed of verbal processing by infants in the second year. Psychological Science, 9, 228-231. (Reprinted in M. Tomasello and E. Bates (eds.), Language Development: The Essential Readings. Blackwell, 2001.)
Swingley, D. (1997). Word Recognition and Representation in Young Children. PhD thesis, Stanford University Department of Psychology.
Swingley, D., Fernald, A., McRoberts, G., and Pinto, J.P. (1996). Prosody, functors, and word recognition in young children. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference on Language Development (pp. 760-767). Somerville, MA.: Cascadilla Press.