Dr Rachel Romeo, Harvard University
Socioeconomic Influences on Brain and Language Development
On average, children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds arrive at school years behind their more affluent peers in many cognitive and academic domains, and these gaps often widen throughout the school years. What are the experiential and neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to these disparities, and how might educational neuroscience help to level the playing field? In this talk, I will present a series of studies investigating how children’s early experiences relate to their linguistic, cognitive, and neural development. We find that preschool children’s conversational interactions with adults explain SES differences in language development and brain structure and function, and that a brief family-based intervention targeting conversational interaction induces cortical neuroplasticity that drives verbal and nonverbal cognitive growth, independent of family SES. Beyond identifying neural mechanisms of experience-dependent language development, findings have implications for early interventions to enhance young children’s language environments, including family-support programs and addressing systemic barriers to family communication.
Speaker Biography
Rachel Romeo, PhD, CCC-SLP is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and speech-language pathologist broadly interested in how children’s early experiences, both favorable and adverse, influence their neural, cognitive, and academic development. She combines methods from developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical/educational interventions to investigate how young brains adapt to varying environments and lead to unique developmental paths. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Psychology at Harvard University, having completed her PhD in the joint Harvard/MIT Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, MSc in Language Sciences from University College London, BA in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, and clinical licensure at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. In 2021 she will begin a faculty position in the department of Human Development at the University of Maryland College Park.
For access to this seminar, please register here, a link will be sent to you within a few days of the talk.
