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

• Quantifying Joystick Interactions and Movement Patterns of Toddlers With Disabilities Using Powered Mobility With an Instrumented Explorer Mini

  IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Powered mobility technology can be a powerful tool to facilitate self-initiated exploration and play for toddlers with motor disabilities. The joystick-controlled Permobil Explorer Mini is currently the only commercially available powered mobility device for children ages 1-3 years in the United States. However, many open questions persist regarding how joystick-based mobility technologies should be designed to optimally suit the developmental needs of toddlers. The purpose of this study was to quantify how toddlers with motor disabilities use the Explorer Mini during free exploration and play. For this work, we developed a custom-instrumented Explorer Mini with embedded sensors to measure joystick interactions and wheel rotations. Nine children with motor disabilities (ages 12-36 months) participated in 12 in-lab visits, and during each visit they engaged in two 15-20 minute play sessions. For each session, we calculated several quantitative outcome metrics, including the time spent using the joystick, distance traveled, and the number, duration, and complexity of joystick interactions. Every participant independently interacted with the joystick and moved the Explorer Mini during every session. Over 12 visits, participants significantly increased their distance traveled and the time spent with the joystick active. Surprisingly, we found that only 48% of joystick interactions resulted in device movement, which has important implications for learning. These results can serve as a benchmark for caregivers and clinicians to understand early device use patterns. Furthermore, this knowledge can be used to inform the design of new powered mobility technologies for toddlers with disabilities or support the refinement of existing devices.

  PublisherDOI

• Reply to Brown et al.: Significant sex differences in accelerated cortical thinning associated with the COVID-19 lockdowns

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-04-01

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 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 sensorimotor systems prepare infants to respond vocally, both of which advance language learning. Using infant magnetoencephalography (MEG), we measure 5-month-old infants' neural responses during live verbal face-to-face (F2F) interaction with an adult (social condition) and during a control (nonsocial condition) in which the adult turns away from the infant to speak to another person. Using a longitudinal design, we tested whether infants' brain responses to these conditions at 5 months of age predicted their language growth at five future time points. Brain areas involved in attention (right hemisphere inferior frontal, right hemisphere superior temporal, and right hemisphere inferior parietal) show significantly higher theta activity in the social versus nonsocial condition. Critical to theory, we found that infants' neural activity in response to F2F interaction in attentional and sensorimotor regions significantly predicted future language development into the third year of life, more than 2 years after the initial measurements. We develop a view of early language acquisition that underscores the centrality of the social ensemble, and we offer new insight into the neurobiological components that link infants' language learning to their early brain functioning during social interaction.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Birds and babies: Ontogeny of vocal learning

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-05-09 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In birds and human babies, the ontogeny of vocal learning shows striking parallels: Both are predisposed toward their species-specific signals at birth, require exposure to speciestypical vocalizations during a "sensitive period," and both are (traditionally) hypothesized to learn in two distinct phases (1).During the sensory learning phase, infants listen and learn the species-typical song or speech signal by memorizing its auditory characteristics and representing the information in the brain; in the sensorimotor learning phase, birds and babies begin to produce song or speech using auditory feedback to improve their nascent attempts to mimic the representations stored in memory (Fig. 1).Leito and Gahr (L&G, 2) challenge this classic view.The authors injected testosterone in young male zebra finches 16 d after hatching while the birds were experiencing typical social exposure.Testosterone caused the zebra finches to sing prematurely, well before control groups who did not receive testosterone began to sing.Birds who sang early also showed normal babbling and sensory learning based on spectrographic analysis of the mature songs produced by

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reply to Fine et al. and Rippon: Significant sex differences in accelerated cortical thinning associated with the COVID-19 lockdowns

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-11-25 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reading instruction causes changes in category-selective visual cortex

  Brain Research Bulletin · 2024-04-25 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Education sculpts specialized neural circuits for skills like reading that are critical to success in modern society but were not anticipated by the selective pressures of evolution. Does the emergence of brain regions that selectively process novel visual stimuli like words occur at the expense of cortical representations of other stimuli like faces and objects? "Neuronal Recycling" predicts that learning to read should enhance the response to words in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC) and decrease the response to other visual categories such as faces and objects. To test this hypothesis, and more broadly to understand the changes that are induced by the early stages of literacy instruction, we conducted a randomized controlled trial with pre-school children (five years of age). Children were randomly assigned to intervention programs focused on either reading skills or oral language skills and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data collected before and after the intervention was used to measure visual responses to images of text, faces, and objects. We found that being taught reading versus oral language skills induced different patterns of change in category-selective regions of visual cortex, but that there was not a clear tradeoff between the response to words versus other categories. Within a predefined region of VOTC corresponding to the visual word form area (VWFA) we found that the relative amplitude of responses to text, faces, and objects changed, but increases in the response to words were not linked to decreases in the response to faces or objects. How these changes play out over a longer timescale is still unknown but, based on these data, we can surmise that high-level visual cortex undergoes rapid changes as children enter school and begin establishing new skills like literacy.

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• COVID-19 lockdown effects on adolescent brain structure suggest accelerated maturation that is more pronounced in females than in males

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-09-09 · 30 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Adolescence is a period of substantial social-emotional development, accompanied by dramatic changes to brain structure and function. Social isolation due to lockdowns that were imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on adolescent mental health, with the mental health of females more affected than males. We assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on adolescent brain structure with a focus on sex differences. We collected MRI structural data longitudinally from adolescents prior to and after the pandemic lockdowns. The pre-COVID data were used to create a normative model of cortical thickness change with age during typical adolescent development. Cortical thickness values in the post-COVID data were compared to this normative model. The analysis revealed accelerated cortical thinning in the post-COVID brain, which was more widespread throughout the brain and greater in magnitude in females than in males. When measured in terms of equivalent years of development, the mean acceleration was found to be 4.2 y in females and 1.4 y in males. Accelerated brain maturation as a result of chronic stress or adversity during development has been well documented. These findings suggest that the lifestyle disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns caused changes in brain biology and had a more severe impact on the female than the male brain.

  PublisherDOI

• Ken Stevens and motor theories

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2024-10-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  At an ASA meeting long ago, Ken Stevens said he had a confession to make, one that I wouldn’t like. “I think I’m becoming a motor theorist,” he said with a little laugh. I registered the surprise he expected and said, “Traditional Motor Theory?” He replied, “not exactly,” and described the sensory and motor components of Quantal Theory. In today’s talk, I’ll review preliminary data from a collaboration between my laboratory and neuroscientists at Washington University (Marc Raichle, Abraham Synder) and Stanford University (Anish Mitra). We are using resting state fMRI experiments to measure spontaneous infra-slow brain activity representing information flow between sensory (Wernicke’s) and motor (Broca’s) brain areas in newborns, 6-, 12-, and 24-month-old infants, as well as adults, and to link information flow in early development to a child’s emergent language skills. If supported, our hypothesis will help explain infants’ abilities to integrate sensory and motor information early in development. Moreover, our data have the potential to substantially alter current theories, creating a sensorimotor theory of speech development, one that I believe Ken Stevens (and traditional motor theorists like Al Liberman) would welcome.

  PublisherDOI

• Heart-to-heart: infant heart rate at 3 months is linked to infant-directed speech, mother–infant interaction, and later language outcomes

  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · 2024-05-02 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: Previous studies underscore the importance of speech input, particularly infant-directed speech (IDS) during one-on-one (1:1) parent-infant interaction, for child language development. We hypothesize that infants' attention to speech input, specifically IDS, supports language acquisition. In infants, attention and orienting responses are associated with heart rate deceleration. We examined whether individual differences in infants' heart rate measured during 1:1 mother-infant interaction is related to speech input and later language development scores in a longitudinal study. Methods: Using a sample of 31 3-month-olds, we assessed infant heart rate during mother-infant face-to-face interaction in a laboratory setting. Multiple measures of speech input were gathered at 3 months of age during naturally occurring interactions at home using the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) system. Language outcome measures were assessed in the same children at 30 months of age using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Results: Two novel findings emerged. First, we found that higher maternal IDS in a 1:1 context at home, as well as more mother-infant conversational turns at home, are associated with a lower heart rate measured during mother-infant social interaction in the laboratory. Second, we found significant associations between infant heart rate during mother-infant interaction in the laboratory at 3 months and prospective language development (CDI scores) at 30 months of age. Discussion: Considering the current results in conjunction with other converging theoretical and neuroscientific data, we argue that high IDS input in the context of 1:1 social interaction increases infants' attention to speech and that infants' attention to speech in early development fosters their prospective language growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mother–infant social and language interactions at 3 months are associated with infants’ productive language development in the third year of life

  Infant Behavior and Development · 2024-04-06 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Previous studies underscore the importance of social interactions for child language development-particularly interactions characterized by maternal sensitivity, infant-directed speech (IDS), and conversational turn-taking (CT) in one-on-one contexts. Although infants engage in such interactions from the third month after birth, the prospective link between speech input and maternal sensitivity in the first half year of life and later language development has been understudied. We hypothesized that social interactions embodying maternal sensitivity, IDS and CTs in the first 3 months of life, are significantly associated with later language development and tested this using a longitudinal design. Using a sample of 40 3-month-old infants, we assessed maternal sensitivity during a structured mother-infant one-on-one (1:1) interaction based on a well-validated scoring system (the Coding Interactive Behavior system). Language input (IDS, CT) was assessed during naturally occurring interactions at home using the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) system. Language outcome measures were obtained from 18 to 30 months of age using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Three novel findings emerged. First, maternal sensitivity at 3 months was significantly associated with infants' productive language scores at 18, 21, 24, 27, and 30 months of age. Second, LENA-recorded IDS during mother-infant 1:1 interaction in the home environment at 3 months of age was positively correlated with productive language scores at 24, 27, and 30 months of age. Third, mother-infant CTs during 1:1 interaction was significantly associated with infants' productive language scores at 27 and 30 months of age. We propose that infants' social attention to speech during this early period-enhanced by sensitive maternal one-on-one interactions and IDS-are potent factors in advancing language development.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD018286

  NIH · $1.6M · 1998

• NIH Grant P50HD055782

  NIH · $22.0M · 2013

• NIH Grant R01HD037954

  NIH · $4.1M · 2013

• SLC Center: The LIFE Center: Learning in Informal and Formal Environments

  NSF · $25.3M · 2004–2010

• NIH Grant P01HD035465

  NIH · $7.2M · 2002

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)