Shakila Shayan

Cross-cultural differences in conceptual development is my main interest. I study whether and how language could shape our conceptual knowledge.

Bridging between the Acquisition group and the Language and Cognition group, I look at children's developing knowledge of language across cultures and investigate differences in their categorization behavior that might be language driven.

Currently I am looking at development of cross-modal associations of pitch to other dimensions. Pitch is described metaphorically in some languages, extending vocabulary from the domain of space (low-high), size (big-small, also thick-thin), and strength quality(strong-weak). The question we address in this project is whether people make such associations at perceptual level: Does high (low) pitch go with a thick snake or a thin snake? We also ask whether these non-linguistic associations are language specific.

I received my double degree PhD in Computer Science and in Cognitive Science from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. My dissertation was on the emerging knowledge of Agent-Patient roles in English speaking preschool children.