Elika Bergelson

Crandall Family Assistant Professor
Education & Training
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania 2013
Overview
Dr. Bergelson accepts PhD applicants through the Developmental and Cog/CogNeuro areas of P&N and the CNAP program.
In my research, I try to understand the interplay of processes during language acquisition.
In particular, I am interested in how word learning relates to other aspects of learning language (e.g. speech sound acquisition, grammar/morphology learning), and social/cognitive development more broadly (e.g. joint attention processes) in the first few years of life.
I pursue these questions using three main approaches: in-lab measures of early comprehension and production (eye-tracking, looking-time, and in EEG studies in collaboration with the Woldorff lab), and at-home measures of infants' linguistic and social environment (as in the SEEDLingS project).
More recently the lab is branching out to look at a wider range of human populations and at infants who are blind or deaf/heard of hearing.
Expertise
Language acquisition, word learning, cognitive development, psycholinguistics
Location
Office hours: By appointment.
Contact
Links
Bergelson, Elika, and Daniel Swingley. “Young toddlers' word comprehension is flexible and efficient.” Plos One, vol. 8, no. 8, Jan. 2013, p. e73359. Epmc, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073359. Full Text Open Access Copy
Bergelson, Elika, and Daniel Swingley. “At 6-9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 109, no. 9, Feb. 2012, pp. 3253–58. Epmc, doi:10.1073/pnas.1113380109. Full Text Open Access Copy
Bergelson, Elika, and William J. Idsardi. “A neurophysiological study into the foundations of tonal harmony.” Neuroreport, vol. 20, no. 3, Feb. 2009, pp. 239–44. Epmc, doi:10.1097/wnr.0b013e32831ddebf. Full Text Open Access Copy
Poeppel, David, and Elika Bergelson. “How music speaks to us.” Nature, vol. 452, no. 7188, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Apr. 2008, pp. 695–96. Crossref, doi:10.1038/452695a. Full Text Open Access Copy
Cristia, Alejandrina, et al. A thorough evaluation of the Language Environment Analysis (LENATM) system. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31219/osf.io/czbym. Full Text
Garrison, Hallie, et al. Familiarity Plays a Small Role in Noun Comprehension at 12-18 months. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31234/osf.io/sz38y. Full Text
Laing, Catherine, and Elika Bergelson. From babble to words: Infants’ early productions match words and objects in their environment. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31234/osf.io/wp3n4. Full Text
Bunce, John P., et al. A cross-cultural examination of young children’s everyday language experiences. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31234/osf.io/723pr. Full Text
Soderstrom, Melanie, et al. Developing A Cross-Cultural Annotation System and MetaCorpus for Studying Infants’ Real World Language Experience. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31234/osf.io/bf63y. Full Text
Cristia, Alejandrina, et al. Accuracy of the Language Environment Analysis (LENATM) System Segmentation and Metrics: A Systematic Review. Center for Open Science. Crossref, doi:10.31219/osf.io/fhs57. Full Text