Jenny Saffran

Credentials: (she/her)

Position title: Rubinstein Professor

Phone: (608) 262-9942

Address:
528 Psychology

Research Interests
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience
Developmental

Research Interest
How do babies learn language? We approach this question through lab-based experiments designed to reveal the learning abilities that infants bring to this challenging task. Research foci include statistical learning, or the means by which infants track patterns and regularities in the input, and its relationship to other cognitive processes such as prediction and active sampling. We are also very involved in questions concerning the nature of the knowledge acquired during language learning, including what words actually mean to babies, the environmental input that shapes word knowledge, and experience-driven individual differences. Finally, we actively collaborate with researchers who have extensive expertise in developmental disabilities in order to better understand diverse developmental trajectories in language learning.

Representative Publications

Breitfeld, E., & Saffran, J. R. (2023). Early word learning is influenced by physical environments. Child Development, 95(3), 962-971. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14046

Prescott, K., Mathée-Scott, J., Reuter, T., Edwards, J., Saffran, J. R., & Ellis Weismer, S. (2022). Predictive language processing in young autistic children. Autism Research, 15(5), 892-903. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2684

Saffran, J. R. (2020). Statistical language learning in infancy. Child Development Perspectives, 14, 49-54. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12355

Zettersten, M., & Saffran, J. R. (2021). Sampling to learn words: Adults and children sample words that reduce referential ambiguity. Developmental Science, 24, e13064. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13064

Pomper, R., & Saffran, J. R. (2019). Familiar object salience impacts novel word learning. Child Development, 90, e246–e262. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13053

Benitez, V., & Saffran, J. R. (2018). Predictable events enhance word learning in toddlers. Current Biology, 28(17), 2787-2793. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30779-6