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is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Cognitive, Social, and Developmental) and Director of the  at Â鶹´«Ã½É«ÇéƬ for Social Research.

Ruthe Foushee's primary research concerns two processes that are more resilient than science can explain: (1) human (linguistic) communication, and (2) children's development of language. How — when there is such tremendous variability in infants' early experiences across the world — does children's language learning vary so little? (What is in common across the apparent diversity of human contexts and of infant learners such that this is possible? How is infants' learning adapted to their early environments?) And in adulthood, how do we get such rich meanings from each other's utterances in conversation, when words are so vague? Ruthe's research combines experimental and observational methods, in contexts ranging from rural indigenous to industrialized, multilingual to monolingual, speaking to signing...to identify the social-cognitive mechanisms underlying everyday communicative success across the lifespan.Ìý

Degrees Held

PhD 2020 Developmental Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

BA 2013 Linguistics, Harvard College

Professional Affiliation

Cognitive Development Society (CDS), Cognitive Science Society, Ethical Science of Language Development (ESLD), Jean Piaget Society (JPS), LangVIEW Consortium, Latin American Network for Language Acquisition Research (LatiNLAR), Linguistics Society of America (LSA), Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society (MCLS), Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators, Society for Language Development (SLD), Society of Philosophy and Psychology (SPP), Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

Recent Publications

Foushee, R. & Srinivasan, M. (2024). . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(23), e2311425121. (Open Access article)

Casillas, M., Foushee, R., Méndez Girón, J., Polian, G., & Brown, P. (2024).Ìý.ÌýFirst Language, 0(0). []

Meylan, S. C., Foushee, R., Bergelson, E., & Levy, R. (2023). . Nature Human Behavior, 7, 2111–2125. []

Foushee, R., Srinivasan, M., & Xu, F. (2023).Ìý.ÌýCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, 32(3). []

Cristia, A., Foushee, R., Aravena-Bravo, P., Cychosz, M., Scaff, C., & Casillas, M. (2023). C. Journal of Child Languag±ð,ÌýMar 13;1-23. []

Foushee, R. & Casillas, M. (2022). . First Language, 42(6). []

Foushee, R., Byrne, D., Casillas, M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2022). . In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.Ìý[]

Foushee, R., Srinivasan, M., & Xu, F. (2021).Ìý.ÌýCognition, 206, 104415. []

Ellwood-Lowe, M., Foushee, R., & Srinivasan, M. (2021).Ìý. Developmental Science, e13151. []

Performances and Appearances

Interviews

• ","ÌýInternational Congress of Infant StudiesÌýµþ±ô´Ç²µ,ÌýFall 2022.
• ""ÌýThe Daily Californian, July 2021.
• "," KPOO San Francisco Performing Arts and Science Interviews, September 2020. []

Selected Research Coverage

Comparative language development

• ","ÌýBig Think, July 2024.
• "," News-Medical: Life Sciences, June 2024.
• ","ÌýBerkeley Talks, August 2022.

Financial inequality and early language

• ","ÌýYahoo, August 2021.
• ","ÌýWashington Post, July 2021.
• ""ÌýScience Daily, July 2021.
• ","ÌýConsumer Affairs, July 2021.
• ","ÌýMoms, July 2021.
• ""ÌýGizmodo Brasil, July 2021.
• , July 2021.

Research Interests

linguistic and non-linguistic communication, cross-cultural/comparative/multimodal language development, caregiver-child interaction, language socialization, overhearing, self-directed/active learning, child-directed language, semantic/pragmatic development, epistemic development, vagueness, linguistic relativity, environmental effects on mechanisms of learning, selective attention, socioeconomic status, multilingualism, ecological validity in research methods

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