Dr. Jean Quigley

Jean Quigley is a Lecturer and Researcher in the School of Psychology, Co-Director of the Infant and Child Research Laboratory and Director of the Psychology Conversion Course (H.Dip.Psych) in the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests are in the psychology of language, with particular reference to early first language acquisition and to language development in the context of neurodevelopmental disorders. Her current projects focus on the critical role of parent-infant interaction for language development. This research has been funded by the Irish Research Council and the HRB among other bodies.

  Autism   Developmental pragmatics and child discourse   Language Acquisition and Development   Psycholinguistics

My research area is child language development. Language is critical for academic and social success, even in the early preschool years. The purpose of my research is to contribute to understanding how language develops and to impact on improving the language abilities of both neurodiverse and neurotypical children. I am the only academic in the School of Psychology with research expertise in this key subdiscipline of psychology. I have published a book with a key international publisher, my research is published in international high impact factor journals in the field, and is included in special issues and in metaanalyses. My datasets are archived in the largest open access repository for spoken language data and are available to researchers worldwide. I am a founding Co-Director of the Infant and Child Research Laboratory in the School of Psychology. This has attracted significant funding (e.g. Health Research Board), collaborations (e.g. TCD School of Medicine) and international postgraduate students. Currently five funded PhD candidates are working on projects related to my research agenda. My work, identifying environmental, family and child factors that impact on child language development and are amenable to intervention, as well as contributing knowledge, is directly relevant to parents, educators and children. There are three main strands to my research agenda: " Longitudinal studies that aim to elucidate the risk and protective factors associated with child language development over time; " Experimental and observational studies of Parent-Child Interaction, the infrastructure for language development, with a unique focus on measuring fathers" contribution to child outcomes; " Studies of language development in atypical contexts, for example, Down Syndrome, Neonatal Encephalopathy, Preterm Birth, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and maternal depression.