Jenny Singleton
Professor — Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact
- E-mail: jsingleton@austin.utexas.edu
- Phone: 512-232-3560
- Office: RLP 4.430
- Office Hours: by appointment
- Campus Mail Code: B5100
Interests
Sign Language Acquisition; Sign Language Disorders; Language Disfluency; Infant gaze behavior; Deaf Seniors
Biography
Jenny Singleton studies signed language acquisition in both typical and atypical contexts. Looking at American Sign Language, in particular, she examines child characteristics, as well as adult language socializing practices, especially involving eyegaze behavior. For many deaf children, acquiring a signed language occurs outside the home, in a school setting, and not from their parents. This creates a unique primary language learning environment that informs language science about the language-making capacity (or resilience) of the child as well as the quality and frequency of the linguistic input needed for successful acquisition to take place. Dr. Singleton also conducts research on "sign language disorders" exhibited in deaf child signers and how atypical hearing learners (e.g., those with language or learning impairments) learn a sign language as a second language. Finally, Dr. Singleton has expanded her research to include older deaf adult signers ("Deaf Seniors"), taking interest in their social resilience, technology use, and how cognitive decline may impact sign language comprehension and production.
