Gerald McRoberts, Ph.D.

Gerald McRoberts's picture
Affiliated Haskins Laboratories
gerald.mcroberts@yale.edu

Visiting Assistant Professor

Dept. of Psychology

University of Connecticut

Education

B.A., University of Minnesota, 1977 (Major: Child Development).

M.A., University of Connecticut, 1989 (Child & Developmental Psychology).

Ph.D., University of Connecticut, 1990 (Child & Developmental Psychology).

Research Interests

My research interests are in the area of early language development, including speech perception (broadly considered), lexical development, and how the structure of speech to infants supports the discovery of various aspects of language structure during the first years of life. My recent research focuses on how individual differences in early language development, including phonological development and vocabulary growth, relate to later skills, such as phonological awareness and literacy development.

Current Grants:

I am an Investigator on the current A40 (Project 1)

Representative Publications

Clark, N. B., McRoberts, G.W., Van Dyke, J. & Braze, D. (2012). Immediate memory for pseudowords and phonological awareness are associated in adults and pre-reading children. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.

Braze, D. & McRoberts, G. W. (2011). The role of early phonological sensitivity in the development of phonological awareness. In: D. Braze, C. Fowler & S. Brady (Eds.), Explaining Individual Differences in Reading: Theory and Evidence. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

McRoberts, G. W., McDonough, C. & Lakusta, L. (2009). The development of infant speech preferences from 4- to 14-months of age. Infancy, 14, 162-194.

Fernald, A., Pinto, J. P., Swingley, D., Weinberg, A. & McRoberts, G. W. (2001). Rapid gains in speed of verbal processing by infants in the second year. In: M. Tomasello and E. Bates (Eds.), Language Development: The Essential Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. T. (1988). Examination of perceptual reorganization for non-native speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 345-360.