Rachel Mayberry

Rachel Mayberry is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California San Diego where she is the Director of the MultiModal Language Development Lab, and an Associate Director of CARTA. Professor Mayberry investigates the structure, development, and psycho- and neurolinguistic processing of signed languages in comparison to spoken languages. Her primary research investigates the linguistic and neural underpinnings of the critical period for language using American Sign Language and deafness as the test case. In previous work she pioneered research on the relation between sign language acquisition and reading development, the co-development of gestures and syntacic acquisition in preschool children learning two languages simultaneously in the home, and how speech dysfluency appears in co-gesture expression. Professor Mayberry's work has been supported by both Canadian and American grant funding agencies and received the Distinguished Alumni Research Award from McGill University. At UCSD she is also affiliated with the Center for Research on Language, the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, the Human Developmental Science Program, and the Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communication Disorders.