Susan A Graham

Biographic Data

ID5758305
NAMESusan A Graham
GIVEN NAMESSusan A
FAMILY NAMEGraham
SIGNATUREGRAHAM S A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Calgary
ORCID0000-0001-7667-1650
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS40
TOTAL CITATIONS4
AUTHOR COUNT40
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1995
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • The Effects of Home Recordings and Parent Training in a Community-Based Early Language Intervention

    Open AccessLorraine D REGGIN, Janelle Wydeven et al.ARTICLELanguages2026

    LENA StartTM is a community-based parent education program designed to promote early language development in children from birth to 3 years of age. In this study, the contributions of three intervention components—home recordings, individualized feedback, and parent education—were examined over 10 weeks across three groups: LENA StartTM program (n = 347), Recordings + Feedback (n = 66), and Recordings Only (n = 51). Linear mixed-effects models we…

  • Common ground without copresence: Preschoolers apply indirect cues about shared knowledge in real-time referential interpretation

    Open AccessValerie San Juan, Katherine Gibbard et al.ARTICLECognitive Development2025

  • Connecting Language Abilities and Social Competence in Children: A Meta-Analytic Review

    Open AccessKarolina Wieczorek, Megan DeGroot et al.ARTICLEChild Development2025

    Research examining relations between language skills and social competence has yielded mixed findings. Three meta-analyses investigated links between language skills (overall, receptive, and expressive) and social competence in 2- to 12-year-old children. Data from 130 studies representing 62,120 children (M age at language assessment = 4.70 years; 52% male), predominantly from North America and Europe, and identifying as White (33%), Black (17%)…

  • Preschoolers modulate contrastive inferences during online language comprehension

    Open AccessNarae Ju, Natalie Williams et al.ARTICLEChild Development2023

    This study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' incremental interpretation of size adjectives, focusing on whether contrastive inferences are modulated by speaker behavior. Children (N = 120, 59 females, mostly White, tested between July, 2018 and August, 2019) encountered either a conventional or unconventional speaker who labeled objects in a correspondingly typical or atypical way. Critical utterances contained size adjectives (e.g., “Look at the big …

  • Cultural divergence in children's selective word learning: Korean and Canadian children differ in their trust of adult informants

    Open AccessJi Hyang Oh, Narae Ju et al.ARTICLESocial Development2023References: 5

    Although children generally regard adults as more knowledgeable than their peers, an informant's past accuracy trumps age when in conflict. In a recent study, however, Korean 5‐year‐olds were more likely to trust a less accurate adult informant over a more accurate peer informant when learning new information. To examine whether such a pattern was attributable to the cultural influence of shaping early respect for the elderly among Korean childre…

  • Supporting Indigenous children’s oral storytelling using a culturally referenced, developmentally based program

    Open AccessMeadow Schroeder, Erin Tourigny et al.ARTICLEThe Australian Journal of…2022

    Indigenous communities in Canada have struggled with systemic inequities that have affected education outcomes of their children. In collaboration with a Stoney Nakoda community in Western Canada, a university research team, composed of Indigenous and non-Indigenous members, offered an instruction program designed to use storytelling as a gateway to early literacy development. Indigenous researchers and collaborators guided program adaptation to …

  • Developmental Pathways Between Infant Gestures and Symbolic Actions, and Children’s Communicative Skills at Age 5: Findings From the All Our Families Pregnancy Cohort

    Open AccessElizabeth Morin‐Lessard, Rochelle F Hentges et al.ARTICLEChild Development2021

    Using data from the All Our Families study, a longitudinal study of 1992 mother-child dyads in Canada (47.7% female; 81.9% White), we examined the developmental pathways between infant gestures and symbolic actions and communicative skills at age 5. Communicative gestures at age 12 months (e.g., pointing, nodding head “yes”), obtained via parental report, predicted stronger general communicative skills at age 5 years. Moreover, greater use of sym…

  • Child Language Difficulties and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms: A Meta-Analysis

    Open AccessRochelle F Hentges, Chloe Devereux et al.ARTICLEChild Development2021

    This study conducted two meta-analyses to synthesize the association between children’s language skills and two broad-band dimensions of psychopathology: internalizing and externalizing. Pooled estimates across 139 samples (externalizing k = 105; internalizing k = 90) and 147,305 participants (age range: 2–17 years old; mean % males: 53.75; mean % White participants: 55.59; mean % minority participants: 43.12) indicated small but significant asso…

  • Linking Quality and Quantity of Parental Linguistic Input to Child Language Skills: A Meta-Analysis

    Open AccessNina Anderson, Susan A Graham et al.ARTICLEChild Development2021

    This meta-analysis examined associations between the quantity and quality of parental linguistic input and children’s language. Pooled effect size for quality (i.e., vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity; k = 35; N = 1,958; r = .33) was more robust than for quantity (i.e., number of words/tokens/utterances; k = 33; N = 1,411; r = .20) of linguistic input. For quality and quantity of parental linguistic input, effect sizes were stronger wh…

  • Cross-Sectional Study Protocol for the Covid-19 Impact Survey of Mothers and Their 7–11 Year Old Children in Alberta, Canada

    Open AccessN Letourneau, Sheila McDonald et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Psychiatry2021

    Objectives: Our aim is to understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on families who have been followed longitudinally in two cohorts studied in Alberta, Canada. We will examine household infections during the COVID-19 pandemic, financial impact, domestic violence, substance use, child school and daily life and relationships in the home. We will identify risk and protective factors for maternal mental health outcomes using longitudinal data t…

  • Maternal depressive symptoms and language development: The moderating role of child temperament

    Rochelle F Hentges, Sheri Madigan et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2021

    The current study examined the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child temperament in predicting subsequent child language skills. Participants were 252 mother-child dyads recruited from the All Our Families longitudinal cohort, a primarily middle-class sample (62.9% completed postsecondary education) from Alberta, Canada (90.5% White, 6% Asian, 3.5% other). Maternal depressive symptoms at age 3, controlling for prenatal depres…

  • Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension

    Open AccessMelanie Khu, Craig G Chambers et al.ARTICLEChild Development2020

    In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or “common ground,” to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds’ (n = 95) use of two different speakers’ perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicate…

  • The Emergence of Cognitive Maps for Spatial Navigation in 7- to 10-Year-Old Children

    Open AccessFord Burles, Irene Liu et al.ARTICLEChild Development2020

    Although much is known about adults’ ability to orient by means of cognitive maps (mental representations of the environment), it is less clear when this important ability emerges in development. In the present study, 97 seven- to 10-year-olds and 26 adults played a video game designed to investigate the ability to orient using cognitive maps. The game required participants to reach target locations as quickly as possible, necessitating the ident…

  • Preschoolers use helpful and harmful interactions to predict social category membership

    Jessica L Switzer, Valerie San Juan et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2020References: 5

    A core question in social categorization research focuses on how children organize social categories. We examined whether 4- and 5-year-olds: (a) identify the social category membership of a person based on relational interactions between that person and a known category member; and (b) use these social categories to guide inferences about certain shared properties. Preschoolers ( n = 229) were introduced to 2 novel social categories (comprised o…

  • Parenting Behavior and Child Language: A Meta-analysis

    Sheri Madigan, Heather Prime et al.ARTICLEPEDIATRICS2019

  • Not speaking the same language: 17-Month-Olds Shift Their Perception of Novel Labels Following Brief Exposure to Non-Native Language

    Open AccessValerie San Juan, Carol Lin et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2019

    We examined if and when English-learning 17-month-olds would accommodate Japanese forms as labels for novel objects. In Experiment 1, infants ( n = 22) who were habituated to Japanese word–object pairs looked longer at switched test pairs than familiar test pairs, suggesting that they had mapped Japanese word forms to objects. In Experiments 2 ( n = 44) and 3 ( n = 22), infants were presented with a spoken passage prior to habituation to assess w…

  • Word Level Stress and Lexical Processing in 17‐Month‐Old Infants

    Open AccessJennifer Campbell, J H Campbell et al.ARTICLEInfancy2019

    Detailed representations enable infants to distinguish words from one another and more easily recognize new words. We examined whether 17‐month‐old infants encode word stress in their familiar word representations. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with pairs of familiar objects while hearing a target label either properly pronounced with the correct stress (e.g., baby /’beɪbi/) or mis‐pronounced with the incorrect stress pattern (e.g., bab…

  • Disfluencies signal reference to novel objects for adults but not children

    Open AccessSarah J OWENS, Justine Marie Thacker et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2018

    Speech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent (“ Look at the ball/lep! ”) or disfluent (“ Look at …

  • Words are not enough: How preschoolers’ integration of perspective and emotion informs their referential understanding

    Open AccessSusan A Graham, Valerie San Juan et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2017

    When linguistic information alone does not clarify a speaker's intended meaning, skilled communicators can draw on a variety of cues to infer communicative intent. In this paper, we review research examining the developmental emergence of preschoolers’ sensitivity to a communicative partner's perspective. We focus particularly on preschoolers’ tendency to use cues both within the communicative context (i.e. a speaker's visual access to informatio…

  • Infants' acceptance of phonotactically illegal word forms as object labels

    Open AccessEna Vukatana, Suzanne Curtin et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2016

    We investigated 16- and 20-month-olds' flexibility in mapping phonotactically illegal words to objects. Using an associative word-learning task, infants were presented with a training phase that either highlighted or did not highlight the referential status of a novel label. Infants were then habituated to two novel objects, each paired with a phonotactically illegal Czech word. When referential cues were provided, 16-, but not 20-month-olds, for…

  • Generics license 30-month-olds’ inferences about the atypical properties of novel kinds

    Open AccessSusan A Graham, A Gelman et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2016Cited by: 1References: 4

    We examined whether the distinction between generic and nongeneric language provides toddlers with a rapid and efficient means to learn about kinds. In Experiment 1, we examined 30-month-olds' willingness to extend atypical properties to members of an unfamiliar category when the properties were introduced in 1 of 3 ways: (a) using a generic noun phrase ("Blicks drink ketchup"); (b) using a nongeneric noun phrase ("These blicks drink ketchup"); a…

  • One is Not Enough: Multiple Exemplars Facilitate Infants' Generalizations of Novel Properties

    Open AccessEna Vukatana, Susan A Graham et al.ARTICLEInfancy2015

    Across three experiments, we examined 9‐ and 11‐month‐olds' mappings of novel sound properties to novel animal categories. Infants were familiarized with novel animal–novel sound pairings (e.g., Animal A [red]–Sound 1) and then tested on: (1) their acquisition of the original pairing and (2) their generalization of the sound property to a new member of a familiarized category (e.g., Animal A [blue]–Sound 1). When familiarized with a single exempl…

  • That's not what you said earlier: Preschoolers expect partners to be referentially consistent

    Open AccessSusan A Graham, Julie Sedivy et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2014

    In a conversation, adults expect speakers to be consistent in their use of a particular expression. We examine whether four-year-olds expect speakers to use consistent referential descriptions and whether these expectations are partner-specific. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we presented four-year-olds with arrays of objects on a screen. During training, Experimenter 1 (E1) used a target expression to identify one object (i.e. “the spotted dog”…

  • The flexibility of 12-month-olds’ preferences for phonologically appropriate object labels

    Heather K MacKenzie, Heather MacKenzie et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2014

    We explored 12-month-olds' flexibility in accepting phonotactically illegal or ill-formed word forms in a modified associative-learning task. Sixty-four English-learning infants were presented with a training phase that either clarified the purpose of a sound-object association task or left the task ambiguous. Infants were then habituated to sets of Czech words with onsets that are illegal in English (e.g., ptak), consonantal sounds (e.g., /l/), …

  • Children's sensitivity to the knowledge expressed in pedagogical and nonpedagogical contexts

    A Gelman, Elizabeth A Ware et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2013Cited by: 2

    The present studies test 2 hypotheses: (1) that pedagogical contexts especially convey generic information (Csibra & Gergely, 2009) and (2) that young children are sensitive to this aspect of pedagogy. We examined generic language (e.g., "Elephants live in Africa") in 3 studies, focusing on informational versus narrative children's books (Study 1), the language of 6-year-old children and adults assuming either a pedagogical (teacher) or nonpedago…