Child language acquisition

The Child Language Acquisition Group of the Center for Language and Brain studies first-language acquisition of kids both in monolingual and bilingual environment as well as language development in children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Developmental Language Disorder / Specific Language Impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and developmental dyslexia.

We do research with different age-group children: 6-to-12-month-old babies, 2-to-6-year-old children, first-grades pupils, 13-to-17-year-old adolescents. We use behavioral methods, eye-tracking, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). We also collect and process the video materials for language acquisition corpus CHILDES.

Our Group develops the standardized tests for language assessment in children. Also, we work on the methods of speech theraphy and share our experience.

If you want to participate in our experiments, please contact us (alopukhina@hse.ru, Dr. Anastasia Lopukhina).

Current projects

Child language corpora CHILDES

Acquisition of the Russian case system by monolinguals and bilinguals
The Acquisition of Ergativity in Georgian

The impact of phonological and orthographic processing on reading development in Russian children
The perceptual span during reading in primary school children
Individual differences in reading among schoolchildren in grades 1-4
The Predictors of Reading Acquisition

Language profile of Russian primary-school-aged children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Neurophysiological mechanisms of auditory processing in children with autism: An MEG study
The role of white-matter tracts in language processing and auditory perception in children with autism
Neural mechanisms of reading in typical and atypical development: An MEG study
EEG Correlates and Behavioral Markers of Non-adjacent Dependency Learning During Passive Listening in Russian-speaking Adults and Children
Language profile of Russian primary-school-aged children with Down syndrome

Applied research

RuCLAB (Russian Child Language Assessment Battery)
Russian phonological test battery for the assesment of language development
New KARASIK test for the assessment of reading skills in Russian

Completed projects

Assessing the Validity of the Standardized Assessment of Reading Skills in Russian
The influence of phonological neighborhood density on word production and recognition in children
Good-enough language processing: the impact of age and noise
Reading trajectories in typically developing children and children at risk of dyslexia