Cognitive Development Lab

Children are growing up in an increasingly digital age, surrounded by digital media in the home, nursery and at school. We are interested in investigating the role of digital media on children’s cognitive development.

We run our studies at our lab in the Allerton building at the University of Salford, at local nurseries and most recently, remotely via video conferencing.

OUR PROJECTS

WORD LEARNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

We are working on an ESRC funded project titled “Investigating the educational potential of touchscreen apps for children’s early vocabulary acquisition” in collaboration with Professor Padraic Monaghan at the University of Lancaster.

The aim of this project is to investigate children’s language learning apps to develop a scientific understanding of the app marketplace and to apply developmental theories of learning, memory and language acquisition to the development of educational touchscreen apps. The proposed project will combine a systematic review of the children’s educational app marketplace with a series of studies to explore how children aged 2-4 years learn language from touchscreen apps and digital media.