Patricia K. Kuhl

About

The Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the University of Washington is dedicated to discovering the fundamental principles of human learning, with a special emphasis on early learning and brain development. The institute seeks to explore essential questions about human learning, aiming to advance our basic understanding of how, when, and why early learning occurs, with the goal of enhancing the lives of all children. The research initiatives at I-LABS focus on understanding the mechanisms underlying early learning and brain development, contributing to the development of game-changing research that can help children achieve their full potential.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Medicine
• Linguistics
• Nuclear medicine
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 219 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  = 71) were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Naturalistic first-person audio recordings of the infants' home language environment and vocalizations were recorded when the infants were 6, 10, 14, and 18 mo of age. After the 6-, 10-, and 14-mo recordings, intervention, but not control parents attended individual coaching appointments to receive linguistic feedback, listen to language input in their own recordings, and discuss age-appropriate activities that promote language gro…

  DOI

• Myelin development in cerebral gray and white matter during adolescence and late childhood

  NeuroImage · 2020 · 83 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Myelin development during adolescence is becoming an area of growing interest in view of its potential relationship to cognition, behavior, and learning. While recent investigations suggest that both white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) undergo protracted myelination during adolescence, quantitative relations between myelin development in WM and GM have not been previously studied. We quantitatively characterized the dependence of cortical GM, WM, and subcortical myelin density across the brai…

  DOI

• Language Experience during Infancy Predicts White Matter Myelination at Age 2 Years

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2023-02-06 · 58 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed the effects of parental language input and parent–infant interactions on early brain development. We examined the relationship between measures of parent and child language, obtained from naturalistic home recordings at child ages 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months, and estimates of white matter myelination, derived from quantitative MRI at age 2 years (mean = 2…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Infants’ brain responses to social interaction predict future language growth

  Current Biology · 2024-04-01 · 41 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  In face-to-face interactions with infants, human adults exhibit a species-specific communicative signal. Adults present a distinctive "social ensemble": they use infant-directed speech (parentese), respond contingently to infants' actions and vocalizations, and react positively through mutual eye-gaze and smiling. Studies suggest that this social ensemble is essential for initial language learning. Our hypothesis is that the social ensemble attracts attentional systems to speech and that sensori…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Development of infants’ neural speech processing and its relation to later language skills: A MEG study

  NeuroImage · 2022-04-25 · 33 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The 'sensitive period' for phonetic learning (∼6-12 months) is one of the earliest milestones in language acquisition where infants start to become specialized in processing speech sounds in their native language. In the last decade, advancements in neuroimaging technologies for infants are starting to shed light on the underlying neural mechanisms supporting this important learning period. The current study reports on a large longitudinal dataset with the aim to replicate and extend on two impo…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD018286

  NIH · $1.6M · 1998

• NIH Grant P50HD055782

  NIH · $22.0M · 2013

• NIH Grant R01HD037954

  NIH · $4.1M · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• T. Christina Zhao

  University of Washington

  68 shared

• Toshiaki Imada

  University of Washington

  48 shared

• Andrew N. Meltzoff

  University of Washington

  44 shared

• Samu Taulu

  University of Washington

  33 shared

• Neva M. Corrigan

  World Institute on Disability

  28 shared

• Alexis N. Bosseler

  University of Washington

  28 shared

• Dirk Van Damme

  27 shared

• Sonia Guerriero

  27 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Speech and Hearing Sciences

  University of Washington

  1981

• M.S., Speech and Hearing Sciences

  University of Washington

  1977

• B.A., Psychology

  University of California, San Diego

  1974

Awards & honors

• Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America (1997)
• Faculty Lectureship Award from the University of Washington…
• Kenneth Craik Research Award from Cambridge University (2005…
• Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minneso…
• Gold Medal of the Acoustical Society of America (2008)