Robin Chapman, professor emerita of Communicative Disorders and Waisman principle investigator, received the 2006 Career Research Scientist Award on Tuesday, May 22, at its Atlanta, GA. meeting from the Academy on Mental Retardation. The award was made for her outstanding contributions to research in mental retardation and developmental disabilities. On Waisman grants funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development and the National Down Syndrome Society she carried out research on language learning in children and adolescents with Down syndrome, demonstrating strengths in vocabulary learning, ongoing acquisition of complex syntax in expressive language in adolescence,and longitudinal losses in syntax comprehension in young adults. With colleagues she demonstrated the importance of auditory short-term memory for comprehension, visual support for story telling, and repeated hearing of novel words for speed of comprehension.
Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.