Duke Psychology & Neuroscience

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  • Makeba P Wilbourn

  • Assistant Professor
  • Psychology and Neuroscience
  • 208 Sociology-Psychology Building
  • Phone: (919) 660-5795
  • Fax: (919) 660-5726
  • Office Hours: TBD
  • Homepage
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Other

    Maria Valdez - mlv6@duke.edu

  • Specialties

    • Developmental Psychology
    • Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience

  • Research Description

    My program of research explores how the relationship between cognition and language changes over time and the types of input (e.g., gestures, bilingualism) that influence this relationship. In general, my research addresses three key theoretical questions. First, how does cognition influence language early in development? In particular, I am interested in how infants and toddlers’ developing cognitive and perceptual skills lay the foundation for early word learning and how this changes as a function of input and experience. Secondly, how does language come to influence cognition in children and adults? In this line of research, I am interested in determining how various types of linguistic and cultural experiences affect the cognitive abilities of monolinguals and bilinguals throughout development. Finally, how does the use of gesture influence the relationship between cognition and language? This area of research focuses on the relationship between early gesture use and later language development and how this relationship is influenced by socio-cultural factors, such as race and socioeconomic status.

  • Areas of Interest

    relation between thought, language, and gesture
    language development
    gestures and signed languages
    multimodal input
    bilingualism
    cognitive development
    information processing

  • Teaching

    • PSY 103RE
      • DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
    • PSY 164S
      • ROLE RACE/ CULTURE ON DEVL
    • PSY 103
      • PRACTICUM
    • PSY 193
      • RESEARCH INDEPENDENT STUDY

  • Education

      • PhD,
      • Developmental Psychology,
      • Cornell University,
      • 2008

  • Awards, Honors and Distinctions

      • Summer Mentored Grant Writing Award,
      • Center for Developmental Science,
      • June, 2012
      • Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award,
      • Oak Ridge Associated Universities,
      • June, 2010
      • Outstanding Alumna of the Year – Psychology,
      • California State University, Fullerton,
      • May, 2009

  • Selected Publications

      • Wilbourn, M.P., & Casasola, M.
      • 2012.
      • Hand me a cue: Developmental changes in infants’ associative word learning abilities.
      • Developmental Psychology
      • .
      • Kalia, V., Wilbourn, M.P., & Ghio, K.
      • 2012.
      • Age of second language acquisition and language proficiency interactively influence bilinguals’ cognition.
      • Bilingualism: Cognition & Language
      • .
      • Robertson, S.R., Watamura, S.E., & Wilbourn, M.P.
      • 2012.
      • Attentional dynamics of infant visual foraging.
      • Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
      • 109:
      • 11460–11464
      • .
      • Wilbourn, M.P. & Sims, J.P.
      • 2013.
      • Get by with a little help from a word: Multimodal input facilitates 26-month-olds' ability to learn symbolic gestures as labels.
      • Journal of Cognition and Development
      • .
      • Wilbourn, M.P., Kurtz, L.E., & Kalia, V.
      • 2011.
      • The Lexical Stroop Sort (LSS) task: A computerized task exploring the relationship between language and executive functioning in school-aged children.
      • Behavior Research Methods
      • .
      • Wilbourn, M.P., Gottfried, A.W., & Kee, D.W.
      • 2011.
      • Consistency of hand preference during the early years: Long-term relationship to verbal intelligence and reading achievement in females.
      • Developmental Psychology
      • 47:
      • 931-942
      • .
      • Wilbourn, M.P., & Casasola, M.
      • 2007.
      • Discriminating signs: Perceptual precursors to the acquisition of a visual-gestural language.
      • Infant Behavior and Development
      • 30:
      • 153-160
      • .
      • Casasola, M., Wilbourn, M.P., & Yang, S.
      • 2006.
      • Can English-learning toddlers acquire and generalize a novel spatial word?.
      • First Language
      • 26:
      • 187-205
      • .
      • Casasola, M., & Wilbourn, M.P.
      • 2004.
      • Fourteen-month-old infants form novel word-spatial relation associations.
      • Infancy
      • 6:
      • 385-396
      • .
      • Gottfried, A.W., Gottfried, A.E., Bathurst, K., Guerin, D.W., & Parramore, M.(2003)..
      • 2003.
      • Socioeconomic status in children’s development and family environment: Infancy through adolescence. In M. Bornstein & R. Bradley (Eds.).
      • .
      • Hersberger, S., Marcoulides, G., & Parramore, M. (2002)..
      • 2002.
      • Introduction to structural equation modeling techniques. In Pugesek, B., Tomer, A., von Eye, A. (Eds.).
      • .
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Makeba P Wilbourn
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