Laura Lakusta

Assistant Professor

Montclair State University Department of Psychology
Center for Infant and Child Research at Montclair State University
Montclair NJ 07043, USA

Email:lakustal@mail.montclair.edu
Office: Dickson 258
Office telephone:(973) 655-7951

CV

Education

Academic Positions

  • Assistant Professor, 2008-present: Department of Psychology, Montclair State University
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, 2005-2008: Department of Psychology, Harvard University

    • Research Area

    Language development, Conceptual development, Spatial language and representation, Williams syndrome

    Research Interests

    Human beings talk about events. The capacity to do so requires an interface between spatial cognition and language. There must be a mapping between the non-linguistic and linguistic representations of an event, and my research explores this mapping throughout development. To do so, I study how infants, children, and adults represent spatial and non-spatial events. Do infants conceptualize events in a way that reflects the way older children and adults talk about events? How do non-linguistic representations serve as a basis for what gets mapped into language? And, how can language influence the way we represent space? My research also explores spatial and linguistic representations of individuals with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder resulting in various spatial deficits with relatively preserved language. Our most current project with this population focuses on whether and how spatial navigation is preserved in Williams syndrome individuals and how language can modulate spatial representations over development.

    Publications

    Landau, B. & Lakusta, L. (in press). Spatial representations across species: geometry, language, and maps. Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

    Wagner, L. & Lakusta, L. (in press). Using language to navigate the infant mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science.

    Lakusta, L., Wagner, L., OHearn, K., & Landau, B. (2007). Conceptual foundations of spatial language: Evidence for a goal bias in infants. Language Learning and Development, 3(3), 179-197.

    Landau, B. & Lakusta, L. (2006). Spatial language and spatial representation: Autonomy and interaction. In M. Hickmann & S. Roberts (Eds.), Space in languages: linguistic systems and cognitive categories. Part of the Typological Studies in Language series. John Benjamin Publishers.

    Lakusta, L. & Landau, B. (2005). Starting at the end: The importance of goals in spatial language. Cognition, 96, 1-33.

    Gomez. R. L. & Lakusta, L. (2004). A first step in form-based category abstraction by 12-month- old infants. Developmental Science, 7 (5), 567-580.

    Landau, B., Hoffman, J. E., Reiss, J. E., Dilks, D. D., Lakusta, L., & Chunyo, G. (2004). Specialization and breakdown in spatial cognition: Lessons from Williams syndrome. In C. Morris, H. Lenhoff, & P. Wang (Eds.), Williams-Beuren Syndrome: Research and Clinical Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Thomas, M., Grant, J., Barham, Z., Gsoedl, M., Laing, E., Lakusta, L., Tyler, L. K., Grice, S., Paterson, S., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2001). Past tense formation in Williams syndrome. Special Issue: Language and Cognitive Processes in Developmental Disorders, 16 (2), 143-176.