Developmental Neurolinguistics Lab


Director: Dr .Valerie Shafer
Lab Meetings:
     Thursdays, 3:30-5:00pm
     Room 7392

Mission Statement

The goal of the Developmental Neurolinguistic Lab is to understand the relationship between language and brain development, and later brain organization.

Research projects are in progress that use electrophysiological methods to examine brain processes. An understanding of the relationship between language and brain development and later brain organization will help explain the nature of developmental language disorders.

Within this site, you can find descriptions of the electrophysiological techniques that we use in ongoing studies. We are currently examining the neurophysiology of language learning in children with typical and atypical language development, particularly children with specific language impairment (SLI). We are also studying the language development of infants, specifically their abilities to discriminate and learn speech sounds (for example, ‘ba’ and ‘pa’), and word patterns.

We use a method with the EEG (brainwaves) to see what is happening in your baby or child’s brain while he/she listens to the sounds. We use a special net of electrodes to pick up brainwave activity from your baby/child’s brain. The net takes about 5 minutes to put on and does not hurt.

The participants in these studies include infants, children with typical language development, and children with SLI.

<Add baby pictures

For information about what it’s like to be in study, please click here.

If you and your child would like to participate in one of our studies or would like to contact us for more information you can e-mail us at vshafer@gc.cuny.edu or telephone us at 212-817-8833.

All information on this page is kept strictly confidential.

Please provide the following information when contacting us:

Child Name 
Date of Birth 
Gender 
Length of Pregnancy
Parent Name 
Address (street, state, zip) 
Telephone number (daytime)
Languages spoken at home

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