
Contact Information
Office Hours
Research Areas
Research Interests
Word learning; Syntax acquisition; Adaptation; Verb bias; Event-based inferences; Situation model; Distributional learning; Contextual and pragmatic influences
Research Description
My research focuses on how children acquire language, particularly examining syntactic adaptation in early word learning. Through looking-time experiments with children aged 18-48 months, I've demonstrated that preschoolers modify their expectations about ambiguous syntactic contexts based on recent input, with these adaptation effects lasting up to one day in 3-year-olds. I provided the first evidence that even toddlers as young as 18 months can adjust syntactic expectations in response to recent experiences.
Beyond syntax acquisition, my work also looks at real-time language processing, investigating how children integrate verb semantics with situation models during comprehension. Using eye-tracking methodology, I've shown that children aged 4-5 can process subtle word presuppositions and use them predictively. My ongoing projects examine verb-bias learning in ambiguity resolution and syntactic bootstrapping mechanisms.
Education
- Ph.D. Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- M.S. Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- B.S. Psychology, Peking University, China
Courses Taught
- PSYC 216 Coordinator & Instructor (Fall 2025)
- PSYC 363 Instructor (Fall 2025)
- PSYC 216 Instructor (Spring 2025)
- PSYC 363 Lab Instructor (Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2022, Fall 2021)
- PSYC 318 TA (Spring 2024)
- PSYC 216 TA (Fall 2022, Summer 2020, Spring & Fall 2019)
Recent Publications
Yu, Y., Havron, N., & Fisher, C. (2025). Syntactic adaptation and word learning in 3- to 4-year-olds. Language Learning, 75(1), 117–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12661