Our research focuses on language processing and language acquisition. We conduct a range of projects investigating a range of populations (e.g., infants, children, adults) and languages (e.g., European languages like English, Italian, and German; Chinese languages like Cantonese and Mandarin; and indigenous languages of Australia and the Pacific). The lab is part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), and is funded by the Australian Research Council and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (The Netherlands).
A big focus of the lab is on understanding the causes and consequences of individual differences in language acquisition and processing across the lifespan. As part of this focus we are running the CoEDL-funded Canberra Longitudinal Child Language Project (CLCL Project). The project follows 100+ typically-developing children from the age of 9 months to 5 years, and aims to document and explain how early language processing skills in infancy influence language development up until children reach primary school.
Alongside the CLCL Project, several other studies are ongoing, including an ARC Discovery Project investigating the role of statistical learning in later language and literacy acquisition, studies of grammatical development, work on symbolic play and language development, work on Australian English, and work with CoEDL members on language processing and production of Australian indigenous languages.
The lab has strong links with CoEDL partners at The University of Manchester, the University of Liverpool, Cornell University, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Donnelly, S., Brooks, P., Homer, B. (2019). Is there a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks? A multiverse meta-analysis of global reaction time and interference cost. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Tsoi, E.Y.L, Yang, W., Chan, A.W.S., & Kidd, E. (2019). Mandarin-English speaking bilingual and Mandarin monolingual children's comprehension of relative clauses. Applied Psycholinguistics.
Quinn, S., & Kidd, E. (2019). Symbolic play promotes non-verbal communicative exchange in infant-caregiver dyads. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 37, 33 – 50.
Kidd, E., Donnelly, S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2018). Individual differences in language acquisition and processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 152 - 169.
Kidd, E., Junge, C., Spokes, T., Morrison, L., & Cutler. A. (2018). Individual differences in infant speech segmentation: Achieving the lexical shift. Infancy, 23, 770 – 794.
Quinn, S., Donnelly, S., & Kidd, E. (2018). The relationship between symbolic play and language acquisition. A meta-analytic review. Developmental Review, 49, 121 – 135.
Chan, A., Yang, W., Chang, F., & Kidd, E. (2018). Four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of relative clauses: A permutation analysis. Journal of Child Language, 45, 174 – 203.
Kidd, E., & Arciuli, J. (2016). Individual differences in statistical learning predict children’s comprehension of syntax. Child Development, 87, 184 – 193.
Donnelly, S., & Verkuilen, J. (2016). Empirical logit analysis is not logistic regression. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 28 – 42.
Kidd, E., Chan, A. & Chiu, J. (2015). Crosslinguistic influence in Cantonese-English bilingual children’s comprehension of relative clauses. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition, 18, 438 – 452.
