Dr. Kathy Johnson
Professor
Office: LD 100E
Phone: (317) 274-4930
Email: kjohnso@iupui.edu
1987 B.S. Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1989 M.S. Developmental Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1992 Ph.D. Cognition and Development, Emory University
Current Research Interests:
I am interested in language and cognitive development in infants and young children, and my current research projects fall into three general areas. In one line of research, we have been prospectively evaluating why some children develop very narrow interests that may eventually culminate in expertise. By monitoring children’s interests through regular interactions with parents and careful analyses of child’s family and home environment, we have been developing a model of factors that contribute to childhood expertise. We also are interested in the cognitive and psychosocial developmental consequences of narrow interests for children and their families.
A second area of research concerns interactions among early language development, symbolic understanding, and categorization in infancy. We are particularly interested in the extent to which infants’ experiences with objects, animals, and vehicles in the real world impact their performance on a variety of categorization and language tasks. Such work ultimately addresses whether infants’ initial categories (and word extensions) are based primarily on perceptual information, or whether they can be influenced by accumulating conceptual knowledge.
Finally, we are conducting a longitudinal investigation of toddlers who have been adopted internationally, with the objective of better understanding why some children learn English and catch up from delays associated with institutional care very rapidly, while others take longer to develop these skills. We also are attempting to understand how parenting styles and other characteristics of adoptive families might moderate cognitive and linguistic gains following international adoption. Results from this research should impact the development of language assessments and family interventions for the rapidly-expanding number of international adoptees in the US.
Selected Publications:
Younger, B. & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Infants’ comprehension of toy replicas as symbols for real objects. Cognitive Psychology, 48, 207-242.
Johnson, K. E., Alexander, J. M., Spencer, S., Leibham, M. E., & Neitzel, C. (2004). Factors associated with the early emergence of intense interests within conceptual domains. Cognitive Development, 19, 325-343.
Johnson, K. E., Younger, B. A., & Furrer, S. D. (2005). Infants’ symbolic comprehension of actions modeled with toy replicas. Developmental Science, 8, 299-313.
