2024
Janet Werker
Developmental psychologist unlocks the secrets of language acquisition
2024
Developmental psychologist unlocks the secrets of language acquisition
Janet Werker is shining a light on what makes human communication so different from that in the animal kingdom. In exploring the roots of our language acquisition, the developmental psychologist is increasing our understanding of the complexity of human communication.
“There are communication systems across the animal kingdom, but they’re not like ours,” says the University Killam Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia. “They don’t have the complexity. They don’t allow an infinite number of sentences to be made, new words to be created by a community or have the ability to talk about things that don’t exist or existed in the past.
“We’re learning there might be a few other species that actually give names to one another, but they still don’t have the embedded clauses that we have, the real complexity of developing an argument, writing poetry, developing plays and writing history.”
Dr. Werker, whose groundbreaking work garnered her the 2024 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, focuses on the perceptual foundations of communication that develop in very early infancy. “So how is it that little babies get started on this journey that rapidly takes them to becoming experts, first in understanding and processing and later in speaking their native language, or languages?
It’s basic research that helps us understand who we are as a species. Dr. Werker looks at how different types of experiences— such as exposure to illness or drugs, an optimal diet versus poor nutrition or growing up bilingual — impact language development.
She says it was both surprising and rewarding to receive the Benjamin Franklin Medal in computing and cognitive science. “It was definitely focused on the more STEM side of the work that I do,” she says of the award.
“I was pleased that language acquisition — a process of development that starts when we’re most vulnerable and is ubiquitous but essential and still mysterious and magical — was being recognized in the computer and cognitive sciences.
