About

Barbara Landau is the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, a position she has held since 2001. She has also served as the Vice Provost for Faculty from 2011 to 2014 and was the Director of the Science of Learning Institute from 2013 to 2018. Her research focuses on human knowledge of language and space, exploring the relationships between these two foundational systems of knowledge. Her central interests concern the nature of the cognitive 'primitives' present during early development that support recognition of objects, spatial navigation, and linguistic expression. Landau investigates how children master the intricate relationships between meanings and their linguistic expressions, how humans come to understand space to recognize and remember objects, motions, and places, and the relationship between language and space across different languages. Her work examines how these systems communicate and enhance each other, drawing on experimental and linguistic methods adapted for young children. She also studies unusual cases of development, such as congenitally blind children, individuals with Williams syndrome, and those who have experienced perinatal stroke, to shed light on normal development and cognition. Her research aims to understand the relationships among genes, brain development, and cognition, providing insights into the organizational principles of the brain and the development of spatial and linguistic knowledge.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Cognitive psychology
• Medicine
• Audiology
• Neuroscience
• Developmental psychology
• Communication

Selected publications

• Representing simple spatial relationships: Are they all the same?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Right-Lateralization of the Visual Word Form Area after Left-Hemisphere Perinatal Stroke

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2025-01-10 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  In literate adults, an area along the left posterior fusiform gyrus that is often referred to as the "visual word form area" (VWFA) responds particularly strongly to written characters compared with other visually similar stimuli. Theoretical accounts differ in whether they attribute the strong left-lateralization of the VWFA to a left-hemisphere (LH) bias toward visual features used in script, to competition of visual word form processing with that of other visual stimuli processed in the same general cortical territory (especially faces), or to the well established left-lateralization of the language system. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test the last hypothesis by investigating lateralization of the VWFA in participants (male and female) who have right-hemisphere language due to a large LH perinatal stroke. Demographically matched controls were included for comparison. All participants had intact language skills and were proficient readers; age at testing ranged from 9.75 years to early adulthood. Activation maps contrasting activation during rapid presentation of pseudowords and pictures of places revealed left-lateralized fusiform activation in controls, as expected. In participants with left-hemisphere perinatal stroke and right-lateralized language, the VWFA was instead found in the right fusiform gyrus, despite the fact that the left-hemisphere tissue normally occupied by the VWFA was intact and responded normally to pictures of places. Region-of-interest analyses confirmed right-lateralization for visual word form processing, both relative to place stimuli and relative to a resting baseline. This provides compelling evidence that the lateralization of the VWFA indeed follows that of the frontotemporal language system.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hemispheric lateralization in motion processing: A study of deaf signers and hearing non-signers

  Journal of Vision · 2025-07-15

  articleOpen access

  Native signers have life-long expertise with a visual-gestural language that is produced by movements of the hands through space and constrained by spatial features, such as orientation, movement path, location, and handshape. Because language is typically lateralized to the brain’s left hemisphere, lifelong processing of visual-spatial linguistic features might also result in left-lateralized processing of non-linguistic visual-spatial materials in native signers. Consistent with this hypothesis, behavioral studies have reported enhanced motion, velocity, and orientation discrimination among signers when stimuli are presented in the right visual field, and one fMRI study found a leftward shift in activation of motion processing area MT-MST for native signers viewing moving flow fields. However, few other imaging studies have investigated MT-MST lateralization in signers, and heterogeneous subject samples make interpretation difficult. Here we used fMRI to investigate lateralization for processing coherent motion in 19 deaf native signers and 19 hearing non-signers, contrasting a coherent motion direction judgment task with viewing of static dots (control). Group-level activation maps revealed bilateral MT-MST activation in both deaf and hearing participants and no significant group differences in lateralization (p=0.80). Compared to hearing participants, deaf subjects showed significant activation in auditory motion regions (p=0.002), which was lateralized to the right hemisphere. These results align with auditory deprivation research showing cross-modal changes in the deaf, with RH dominance in auditory motion regions for processing coherent motion. However, the findings do not support previous reports on LH lateralization for visual processing due to life-long sign exposure.

  PublisherDOI

• Blind Children's Language is Not “Meaningless”

  2025-11-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Ins and Outs of spatial language: Pragmatics shapes early-developing, cross-linguistically robust encoding patterns

  Journal of Memory and Language · 2024-06-28

  articleOpen access

  • We uncover an asymmetry in the use of English positive and negative containment and support terms ( in/on vs. out/off ). • Children and adults use out / off rarely to describe static locations but frequently to describe dynamic motions. • However, when contextual support is present, the use of out/off increases. • The restricted distribution of out / off is a pragmatic consequence of their negative semantics. • Similar patterns are observed in the use of containment and support locatives by French, Greek and Turkish speakers. Research on the language of space has uncovered a complex set of conceptual and linguistic factors affecting the nature, use and acquisition of spatial vocabularies across languages. Here we highlight the important but understudied role of pragmatic factors in how spatial relations are encoded across ages and languages. We focus on Containment ( in/out ) and Support ( on/off ) terms that can denote both static locations (‘places’: be in/out of X ) and dynamic motions (‘paths’: go in/out of X ). We offer a new pragmatic analysis of place-denoting out/off as ‘negative’ locatives and, as a result, predict that such expressions should have a restricted informational contribution (and use) compared to in/on . This prediction is confirmed in four experiments. In elicited production tasks with English-speaking adults and three-year-olds, out and off (unlike in and on ) are used extremely sparsely to describe static locations (Experiment 1) but quite frequently to describe dynamic motions (Experiment 2). When contextual support is present, the use of place-denoting out/off increases (Experiment 3). Similar patterns in the use of locatives are found in French, Greek and Turkish speakers (Experiment 4). We conclude that pragmatic factors produce striking, early emerging and cross-linguistically stable properties of spatial vocabulary.

  PublisherDOI

• “Dividing the labor”: Lexical verbs and the linguistic encoding of physical support in 2- to 4.5-year-old children

  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · 2023-11-03 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• How Does English Encode ‘Tight’ Vs. ‘Loose-fit’ Motion Events? It’s Complicated

  Language Learning and Development · 2023 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Linguistics

  Linguistic encoding of spatial events has long provided a forum for examining how languages encode space, how children learn their native encodings, and whether cross-linguistic differences affect non-linguistic representations of space. One prominent case concerns motion events in which objects are moved into tight or loose-fit relationships of containment or support. Seminal findings from Bowerman showed that young children learning Korean regularly use specific verbs to encode tight/loose fit across containment and support relationships, whereas children learning English use prepositions to encode containment or support (e.g. in/on) across the tight/loose fit distinction. Others have asked how these early-acquired differences affect non-linguistic encoding of similar events. Many of these studies have focused on the lexical differences between the two languages – verbs (in Korean) and/or prepositions (in English). Here, we ask whether this focus might underestimate how English encodes these events by closely examining the range of options used by English speakers to encode loose and tight-fit motion events. In Experiment 1, 3-year-old and adult English speakers described joining and separating events which culminated in loose or tight-fit end-states. Participants’ use of lexical verbs together with their syntactic frames differentiated among the event types, especially between “loose-fit” events with asymmetric motion between objects (e.g. a block being put into a bowl) vs. “tight-fit” events with symmetric motion (e.g. two Legos being brought together at the same time). In Experiment 2, we replicated the basic findings using events portrayed with more complex of objects. Our findings show that English affords both children and adults rich resources to encode motion events culminating in tight and loose fit end-states; these devices include both lexical items and syntactic frames. The findings raise important questions about how to examine effects of language on non-linguistic spatial cognition in children and adults.

  PublisherDOI

• The Construction and Use of Spatial Knowledge in Blind and Sighted Children

  Psychology Press eBooks · 2022-10-11 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter provides evidence that the proper analysis of spatial knowledge and its development leads to the conclusion that both blind and sighted children face identical problems in coming to understand space. Some new evidence suggests that blind toddlers engage in systematic and efficient haptic exploration that could allow them to extract important object properties early in life. Indeed, some have suggested that the blind extract textural information at the expense of shape information. Evidence on the blind child comes from B. Landau, who extended the observations on spatial knowledge in the blind child to include a map task. The blind child and adult seem quite capable of understanding and using physical representations of space. For the sighted child, it seems obvious that first language learning depends in part on adequate construal of the spatial world—of objects and object layouts, and the spatial relationships embodied in events.

  PublisherDOI

• Characterizing the Details of Spatial Construction: Cognitive Constraints and Variability

  Cognitive Science · 2022-01-01 · 9 citations

  articleSenior author

  Spatial construction-the activity of creating novel spatial arrangements or copying existing ones-is a hallmark of human spatial cognition. Spatial construction abilities predict math and other academic outcomes and are regularly used in IQ testing, but we know little about the cognitive processes that underlie them. In part, this lack of understanding is due to both the complex nature of construction tasks and the tendency to limit measurement to the overall accuracy of the end goal. Using an automated recording and coding system, we examined in detail adults' performance on a block copying task, specifying their step-by-step actions, culminating in all steps in the full construction of the build-path. The results revealed the consistent use of a structured plan that unfolded in an organized way, layer by layer (bottom to top). We also observed that complete layers served as convergence points, where the most agreement among participants occurred, whereas the specific steps taken to achieve each of those layers diverged, or varied, both across and even within individuals. This pattern of convergence and divergence suggests that the layers themselves were serving as the common subgoals across both inter and intraindividual builds of the same model, reflecting cognitive "chunking." This structured use of layers as subgoals was functionally related to better performance among builders. Our findings offer a foundation for further exploration that may yield insights into the development and training of block-construction as well as other complex cognitive-motor skills. In addition, this work offers proof-of-concept for systematic investigation into a wide range of complex action-based cognitive tasks.

  PublisherDOI

• Lila Gleitman—trailblazer in cognitive science, beloved mentor, incandescent wit—dies at 91

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022-03-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans the biological, physical, and social sciences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01NS050876

  NIH · $1.7M · 2011

• Collaborative Research: Connecting linguistic and perceptual development through symmetry

  NSF · $98k · 2020–2024

• NIH Grant R01MH055240

  NIH · $260k · 2001

Frequent coauthors

• James E. Hoffman

  29 shared

• Katrina Ferrara

  Georgetown University

  28 shared

• Elissa L. Newport

  Georgetown University

  24 shared

• Anna Seydell‐Greenwald

  Georgetown University Medical Center

  21 shared

• Catherine E. Chambers

  Georgetown University Medical Center

  21 shared

• William D. Gaillard

  George Washington University Hospital

  17 shared

• Alexander W. Dromerick

  MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital

  14 shared

• Linda B. Smith

  Indiana University Bloomington

  14 shared

Labs

• Language and Cognition LabPI

Awards & honors

• Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…
• Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society
• Guggenheim Fellow (2009)