Jesse Snedeker

Jesse Snedeker

Professor
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
33 Kirkland St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-3873
Fax: 617-384-7944
[email protected]

 

Education

University of Washington, B.A., 1994
University of Pennsylvania, M.A., 1996
University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D., 1999

 

Positions

2010-Present Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Harvard University

2006-2010 John L. Loeb Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Harvard University

2001-2006 Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Harvard University

2000-2001 Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania

 

Publications

New Work

Language in Autism

International Adoption as a Natural Experiment

Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics

Word Learning and Concepts

Prosody

The Development of Online Language Comprehension

Evidence for The Decomposition of Verb Learning (Semantic Primitives)

Structural Priming

Language Creation (Nicaraguan Sign Language & Artificial Language Learning)

 

Research Grants

(under review) Pragmatic and prosodic processes in highly-verbal children with autism. NIH.
(under review) Linguistic Commitment and Plasticity: Potential Insights from International Adoption. NSF.

January 2019 - December 2021 Predictive Processes in Autistic and Neuro-typical Individuals. The Simons Foundation.

September 2018 - August 2020 Development of Children's Language Comprehension using ERPs During Natural Listening. National Institutes of Health (R03).

Fall 2018 to present with no expiration - The Storytime Paradigm: A Naturalistic Method for Studying Neural Basis of Language Comprehension in Children. Harvard Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship Award.

April 2017 - April 2019 Language Creation: Modeling the Rapid Emergence of a New Language in Nicaragua. Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research.

October 2017 - September 2019 Investigating Scalar Representations of Value in Infancy. Pershing Square Fund for Foundations of Human Behavior. Co-Investigator (with Elizabeth Spelke).

July 2017 - June 2018 Linguistic Complexity in an Emerging Language. The Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. Co-Investigator (with Kathryn Davidson).

July 2016 - June 2017 Nicaraguan Sign Language as a Window into Language Development and Cognition. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

2015-2017 Grammar, motives, and events: infants’ use of linguistic categories in reasoning about intentions. The Pershing Square Venture Fund for Research on the Foundations of Human Behavior.

2015-2016 The Structure of Logical Representations in Language and Thought. Mind/Brain/Behavior.

2014-2015 Nicaraguan Sign Language as a Window into Language Development and Cognition. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

2012-2015 Prosodic and Pragmatic Training in Highly-Verbal Children with Autism. Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

2009-2012 From Words to Inferences: The Development of Incremental Language Comprehension. NSF BCS
2013-2015 Development of Language Comprehension (in Turkish). Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship.

2013-2014 Number and Counting in Indigenous Communities in Brazil. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

2009-2012 BCS: From Words to Inferences: the Development of Incremental Language Comprehension. NSF-BCS.

2009-2012 Prosodic and Pragmatic Processes in Highly-Verbal Children with Autism. Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

2011-2012 Testing a Top-Down Impairment Hypothesis of Linguistic Deficits in Schizophrenia (Co-PI: G. Kuperberg). Mind/Brain/Behavior, Harvard University
2009-2011 Cognitive Neuroscience of Autism (Language Subcontract, PI: N. Kanwisher). The Ellison Medical Foundation.

2007-2008 Language Comprehension in Children with Pragmatic and Linguistic Challenges. Research Enabling Grants, Harvard University.

2004-2006 Language Acquisition in Internationally Adopted Children. NSF BCS.

2004-2006 Understanding the Grammatical Development of Children with Cochlear Implants. The William F. Milton Fund.

2002-2004 Bayesian Learning at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (co-PI: R. Berwick). NSF ITR.

Recent Talks

Snedeker, J. (2016) Clean Mapping: How conceptual structure might serve as the developmental and phylogenetic starting point of syntax. Invited talk at Princeton Cognitive Psychology Seminar, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, December 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Clean Mapping: How conceptual structure might serve as the developmental and phylogenetic starting point of syntax. Invited talk at the University of Connecticut Syntax Workshop, Storrs CT, September 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Clean Mapping: A story about how conceptual structure could shape language acquisition and some evidence suggesting that it might be true. Invited talk at The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning, National Center for the Humanities, Chapel Hill North Carolina, July 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Safe Experimentation. Invited talk at The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning, National Center for the Humanities, Chapel Hill North Carolina, July 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Clean Mapping 2: An alternative form of nativism and some possible research strategies. Invited Talk at XPrag annual meeting, Tubingen Germany, June 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Starting over: What internationally adopted children tell us about how all children acquire language. Invited talk at International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), New Orleans LA, May 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Language in Motion: the 21st century standard model of cognitive processing & its implications for developmental pragmatics. Invited talk at xPrag workshop, Humboldt University, Berlin Germany, May 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Prosody & pragmatics in high-functioning autism:  Insights from the visual world paradigm. Invited talk at Developmental Perspectives on Language Processing Workshop, Macquarie University, Sydney Australia, May 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Clean Mapping: A story about how conceptual structure could shape language acquisition and some evidence suggesting that it might be true. Invited talk at Centre for Language Sciences and Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CLaS-CCD) Research Colloquium Series, Macquarie University, Sydney Australia, May 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Prosodic and pragmatic processing in highly verbal children with autism: A training study. Invited talk at the Annual Simons Foundation SFARI meeting, New York NY, April 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Language Comprehension in High Functioning Autism. Invited talk at the University of Chile Symposium on Genes, Brains and Behavior, Santiago Chile, April 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Prosody and pragmatics in high-functioning autism:  Insights from the visual world paradigm. Invited talk for The Attentive Listener in the Visual World (AttLis), Potsdam Germany, March 2016  

Snedeker, J. (2016) A modest proposal about the role of event structure in language development and evolution. Invited talk for CUNY Preconference Workshop on Events, Gainesville FL, March 2016.

Snedeker, J. (2016) Accounting for children's scalar implicature failures and successes: an examination of the lexical alternatives hypothesis. Invited talk for Trends in Experimental Pragmatics, Tubingen Germany, January 2016.

Children’s comprehension of negation: When can you say “no” to a toddler? Invited talk at the 2015 Xprag.de meeting, Göttingen, June 2015.

Clean Mapping: A sketchy story about how conceptual structure could shape language acquisition and some evidence suggesting that it just might be true. Invited talk at ZAS, Berlin, June 2015. [Also: University of Maryland, Cognitive Science Colloquium, February 2015; Yale Developmental Seminar, January 2015; University of Connecticut, Linguistics Colloquium, October 2014; University of Edinburgh, September 2014]

Embodied cognition(s), development and language: An outsider’s perspective. Göttingen, July 2015. [Also: ZAS Berlin, June 2015; Embodied and Situated Language Processing, Newcastle, August 2012.]

Scalar implicature: a whirlwind tour with stops in processing, development and disorder. Tubingen, July 2015. [Earlier versions presented as invited talks at: University College London, June 2013; CUNY 2014, University of Ohio, March 2014; Xprag.de annual meeting, ZAS, Berlin, June 2014]

Comprehension of case in German children: Evidence against a maturational hypothesis. (Özge, Kornfilt, Münster, Knoeferle, Küntay & Snedeker). CUNY 2015, USC, March 2015.

Children’s language comprehension: incremental, interactive and abstract. Michigan State University, Cognitive Science Colloquium, March 2014. [Also: Potsdam University, June 2015; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, DF Mexico, February 2014; Indiana University, Cognitive Science Colloquium, October 2013]

Pragmatic and Prosodic Processing in Autism. ZAS, June 2015. [Earlier versions presented as invited talks at: University College London, June 2013; Prosody Xprag.de annual meeting, June 2014]