‘Amazing Babies’ lectures set April 28, 29

2:02 p.m., April 21, 2005--Jill and Peter de Villiers, a husband-and-wife team from Smith College noted for their work on language acquisition in preschool children, will give three lectures at UD as part of the “Amazing Babies” series sponsored by UD’s Cognitive Science Program and School of Education.

Jill de Villiers, Sophia and Austin Smith Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, and Peter de Villiers, Sophia and Austin Smith Professor of Psychology, will discuss "Meeting the Challenge of Dialect-Neutral Language Assessments," at 1 p.m., Thursday, April 28, in 207 Willard Hall Education Building. They will review their progress towards developing language assessments that are not biased against children who speak dialects of English, such as African-American English.

At 4 p.m., Thursday, April 28, in 109 Willard Hall Education Building, Peter de Villiers will discuss “What Deaf Children Tell Us About the Relation of Language to Theory of Mind.” The talk will explore which aspects of theory of mind happen without language involvement and which aspects may require language.

The last lecture, “Language and Theory of Mind: The Frontiers,”
by Jill de Villiers, is a brown-bag-lunch lecture beginning at noon and ending at 1:30 p.m., Friday, April 29, in 207 Willard Hall Education Building. She will discuss her and her husband’s research into the relationship of language and theory of mind, which aspects of theory of mind development are conceptual, which aspects might require language first, what role language plays and whether theory of mind plays a reciprocal role in feeding language skills.

Information on the entire "Amazing Babies" series can be found at [www.ling.udel.edu/cogsci/CogSciColloq/cogscicolloq.htm]. For more information, call (302) 831-8203.

Article by Barbara Garrison

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.