Sudha Arunachalam

About

Dr. Sudha Arunachalam is a Professor of Communicative Sciences and Disorders and serves as the Principal Investigator and Lab Director at the LEARN Lab at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and an M.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her research program focuses on understanding how infants, toddlers, and preschoolers acquire their native language. She studies language development in children who are typically developing, as well as those with autism spectrum disorder and language delay. Dr. Arunachalam is particularly interested in the learning mechanisms that underlie language acquisition and the role of caregiver-child interactions in supporting this learning process. Outside of her academic work, she enjoys taking long walks in New York City and exploring new foods.

Research topics

• Linguistics
• Cognitive psychology
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Toddlers’ word learning through overhearing: Others’ attention matters

  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · 2020 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Two-year-olds consolidate verb meanings during a nap

  Cognition · 2020 · 15 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Three-year-olds' comprehension of contrastive and descriptive adjectives: Evidence for contrastive inference

  Cognition · 2021 · 12 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Do focused interests support word learning? A study with autistic and nonautistic children

  Autism Research · 2024-03-11 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Although focused interests are often associated with a diagnosis of autism, they are common in nonautistic individuals as well. Previous studies have explored how these interests impact cognitive, social, and language development. While some research has suggested that strong interests can detract from learning (particularly for autistic children), newer research has indicated that they can be advantageous. In this pre-registered study, we asked whether focused interests support word learning in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Spoken verb learning in children with language disorder

  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · 2024-03-02 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  The current study examined spoken verb learning in elementary school children with language disorder (LD). We aimed to replicate verb learning deficits reported in younger children with LD and to examine whether verb instrumentality, a semantic factor reflecting whether an action requires an instrument (e.g., "to chop" is an instrumental verb), influenced verb learning. The possible facilitating effect of orthographic cues presented during training was also evaluated. In an exploratory analysis,…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Children's real-time language processing and verb learning during interactions with caregivers

  NSF · $312k · 2018–2023

• Language Processing and Word Learning in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

  NIH · $2.0M · 2018–2025

• Learning new words from overhearing in children with ASD

  NIH · $1.8M · 2020–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Rhiannon Luyster

  Emerson College

  18 shared

• Sandra R. Waxman

  Northwestern University

  13 shared

• Allison Fitch

  Rochester Institute of Technology

  11 shared

• Sabrina Horvath

  Medical University of South Carolina

  11 shared

• Angela Xiaoxue He

  Hong Kong Baptist University

  9 shared

• Amy M. Lieberman

  Boston University

  8 shared

• Isabelle Roy

  Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes

  5 shared

• Elaine S. Andersen

  University of Southern California

  5 shared

Labs

• LEARN Lab at NYUPI

Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics

  University of Pennsylvania

  2007

Awards & honors

• ASHA fellow

Similar researchers at New York University

• J. Lawrence Aberh-63
• Safinah Alih-18
• Elaine Beckerh-11