Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Children who face severe adversity, such as physical abuse, early in life often develop behavioral and emotional problems. But the underlying psychological mechanisms that link early adversity with negative outcomes have remained unclear. A new study, published in February in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, by researchers from several institutions, including the Waisman …
Title: Does Bilateral Experience Lead to Improved Spatial Unmasking of Speech in Children Who Use Bilateral Cochlear Implants? Legend: We vary the spatial locations of target speech and masking speech, so they are co-located (A) or separated (B). The difference in speech reception thresholds between (A) and (B) indicates advantage from spatial cues (spatial release …
One Wednesday in September, 15-year-old Tristan Thurman went to soccer practice at his high school. The team had just lost a game the day before because the other team had scored goals heading the ball, so this practice session was dedicated to heading drills. Tristan remembers feeling slightly dizzy after practice. By that Friday morning, …
Title: Grammatical processing and non-verbal working memory in monolingual and bilingual children Legend: Spanish-English bilingual children did not perform as well on the English grammaticality judgment task, and showed greater reliance on nonverbal working memory during grammatical processing compared to monolingual English-speaking children. Citation: Gangopadhyay, I., Davidson, M.M., Ellis Weismer, S., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2016). …
The Waisman Center is proud to partner with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Athletic Department for the Wisconsin football team’s annual Spring Game to be held on Friday, April 21 at 6:30 p.m. at Camp Randall Stadium. Tickets for the Spring Game are $5 and are on sale now. Proceeds from the game will go toward …
Title: Longitudinal development of communication in children with cerebral palsy between 24 and 53 months: Predicting speech outcomes Legend: (Left) Longitudinally-assessed word intelligibility score (%) by age and time since child was first able to speak. Thin lines are individual children. Thick lines are group means as a function of time (months) since child was …
Stem cells are remarkable cells that have the ability to become almost any kind of specialized cells in our bodies. Given this extraordinary potential, how does a stem cell keep from having an identity crisis? A recent study from Waisman Center researcher Xinyu Zhao’s lab shows how a gene called MBD1 plays an important role …
Title: Neural Distance Effects When Comparing Fractions and Line Ratios Legend: Left: Adult participants were asked to compare pairs of fractions (top), combinations of fractions and line ratios (middle) or pairs of line-ratios (bottom), while we recorded accuracy and reaction time (RT). Pairs were chosen so that some were “near” (i.e., similar, like 5/7 vs. …
Waisman researcher Edward Hubbard likes to tell a story about burgers. In the early 1980s, A&W Restaurants introduced a new burger that had a third of a pound of beef. This burger was supposed to compete with MacDonald’s quarter-pound burger and because both burgers were priced the same, A&W executives expected their bigger burger to …
Title: Family Context and Parenting Experiences in Autism Legend: Family context (having multiple children with special needs [Fig 1], household income [Fig 2], and parent level of broader autism phenotype [BAP; Fig 3] moderated spillover of a challenging parenting day on next-day couple experiences in parents of children with autism across a 14-day daily diary. Citation: …
