Margarita Kaushanskaya
Ph.D. Northwestern University
Assistant Professor, Communicative Disorders

Contact Information:
UW-Madison
1975 Willow Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-6473
Fax: (608) 262-6466
E-mail: kaushanskaya@wisc.edu

Research Statement

Ritas research focuses on second-language acquisition and bilingualism in children and adults. The overall goal of her research program is to uncover the nature and the developmental trajectory of cognitive mechanisms that underlie language learning. Her work examines how monolingual and bilingual children and adults learn words in a new language, and how bilinguals manage their two languages when they must speak or read in one language only. Currently, Rita is exploring links between vocabulary learning and literacy in monolingual and bilingual children. Her research takes place in the Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Laboratory, housed in the Goodnight Hall and the Waisman Center.

Representative Publications

Kaushanskaya, M., & Marian, V. (2007). Age-of-acquisition effects in the development of a bilingual advantage for word learning. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press; Somerville, MA.

Marian, V., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). Language context guides memory content. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 925-933.

Kaushanskaya, M., & Marian, V. (2007). Non-target language recognition and interference in bilinguals: Evidence from eye tracking and picture naming. Language Learning, 57, 119-163.

Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H.K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940-967.