Professor Dr. Susan Curtiss

Biography

Susan Curtiss is a Professor Emeritus at UCLA, specializing in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Her research focuses on the interplay between language development and cognitive functioning, particularly examining maturational constraints and the effects of critical periods on syntax and morphology. Curtiss has conducted extensive empirical studies illustrating how grammatical development can be distinctively modular, with implications for understanding language impairment in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Her work has been pivotal in showing that children with SLI develop grammar differently than typically developing peers, revealing crucial insights into developmental subtypes and the neurological underpinnings of language acquisition. She has also studied the linguistic outcomes in pediatric patients who have undergone hemispherectomy due to severe epilepsy, providing surprising insights into how age and the specifics of neurological impairment affect language development trajectories. In her recent studies, she uses various experimental techniques to map grammar in the brain of both normal and epileptic adults, contributing to the understanding of language's cognitive organization.

Research Interests