Courtney Venker

Dr. Venker studies language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with an emphasis on how these children process spoken language and learn the meanings of new words. She is also interested in how adults simplify their speech when talking to young children with language delays—for example, by shortening the length of their utterances. Recent work has focused on the unintended negative effects of presenting children with ungrammatical speech in an attempt to facilitate their language development. Presenting ungrammatical and grammatical speech introduces increased statistical “noise” in the input, which would likely make it more difficult to learn the rules of the English language. Dr. Venker’s research uses a variety of methods, including standardized language and cognitive assessments, coding and transcription of parent-child play interactions, and experimental eye-tracking tasks. The REU student will engage in a project examining the amount of linguistic and non-linguistic noise introduced into parent-child play by electronic toys, compared to traditional toys (which do not sing, talk, or make animal sounds). This project will also involve designing and piloting new eye-gaze tasks to determine how different types of noise affect language processing in children with and without ASD. Dr. Venker’s teaching focuses on language disorders and autism spectrum disorders, with an emphasis on Master’s students studying to be future speech-language pathologists. She also engages in a great deal of research mentoring of both graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Venker has mentored several students through the Professorial Assistant program sponsored by the Honors College at Michigan State University. She was also a recipient of the Michigan State University Teacher-Scholar Award in 2020. Mentored undergraduate students in the past 3 years: 13. Published papers with undergraduates: 0. Conference presentations with undergraduates: 1