Bernard G. Grela, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Sciences
Child
Language Development and Child Language Disorders
Education
- B.A. (1985)
- M.S. (1989)
- Ph.D. (1999)
Research Interests
The process of
language
development in normally developing children and children with specific
language
impairment (SLI). Current work has been focusing on linguistic
complexity
and the impact of complexity on grammatical errors in children.
This
research stems from a background in cognitive psychology and
psycholinguistics.
Current Projects
1. Verb learning following the manipulation of argument structure. Can children with SLI use argument structure alternations to learn the meaning of novel verbs ?
2. Perception of real and nonsense words in children with SLI. This study examines children's abilities to perceive words when discrepant auditory and visual information (McGurk Effect) are presented. Our prediction is that children with SLI will have difficulty fusing the discrepant information (Collaborator: Kathleen Cienkowski).
3. Grammaticality judgement
in children with SLI. This is a partial replictation
of Montgomery and Leonard (1998). We have modified their experiment by
introducing
speech-weighted noise following the grammatical morphemes of low
phonetic
substance. We are interested in determining whether backward masking
has the
same effect as linguistic content following the grammatical morpheme
(Collaborator: Deborah Moncrieff).
4. When languages clash: lexical aspect and past tense morphology in African American English. This study examined whether children’s use of regular past tense morphology is dependent upon their production of telic and atelic verbs (Collaborator: Valerie Johnson).
Child Language Lab
The
child language lab is housed on the lower floor of the Communication
Sciences
building. It serves as the research center to examine the communication
skills
of children with language impairments and their normally developing
peers. We
are equipped to see children for experiments and complete data
analysis.
Courses Taught
- CDIS 202 Speech and Language Development
- CDIS 253 Introduction to Childhood Language Pathologies
- CDIS 348 Assessment & Intervention Birth to 5
- CDIS 363 Literacy and Children with Language Impairments