Biography
I obtained a BSc in Physics from Imperial College before switching to Experimental Psychology at Sussex University where I obtained a D.Phil. in 1979. After brief sojourns at Nottingham University and the Open University, I moved to the Institute of Psychology, Aarhus University, Denmark and studied children’s acquisition of Scandinavian languages. From 1986, I spent a great deal of time at the University of California, San Diego studying the application of neural networks to modelling linguistic and cognitive development in young children. From 1991, I was a member of the faculty in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford. In 1992, I established the Oxford BabyLab which was a research facility for the experimental investigation of linguistic and cognitive development in babies and young children. I maintain an active interest in Scandinavian languages and neural network modelling. I retired in September 2021 and shortly thereafter moved to Spain where I maintain my academic interests, when there is time, in between playing golf, raising 2 Doberman puppies and driving around the Catalan countryside in a Morgan Plus Four.
Research Summary
My main interest is in understanding the mechanisms of change that drive linguistic and cognitive development in infants and young children. The primary focus of my work is on word recognition, word learning, semantic development and category formation during the first two years of life. I also have a long standing interest in morphological processes in children and adults.