Jenny Saffran
Position title: College of Letters & Science Professor of Psychology
Email: jsaffran@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-9942
Address:
528 Psychology; 538A Waisman Center
College of Letters & Science Professor of Psychology
Ph.D. 1997, University of Rochester
Pronouns: She/her/hers
How do children acquire their native language? My research focuses on the kinds of learning abilities required to master the complexities of language. Three broad issues characterize my work. One line of research asks what kinds of learning emerge in infancy. A second line of research probes the biases that shape human learning abilities, and the relationship between these biases and the structure of human languages. A third issue concerns the extent to which the learning abilities underlying this process are specifically tailored for language acquisition. Related research concerns infant music perception, and the relationship between music and language learning.