Margarita Kaushanskaya, Ph.D.
Position title: Professor
Email: kaushanskaya@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-6473
Address:
343 Goodnight Hall
1975 Willow Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Profile
Research Statement
Dr. Kaushanskaya is a Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences Disorders of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She graduated with a BA in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She then moved to the Midwest, and got both her M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology and her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University. Dr. Kaushanskaya leads and supervises research that goes on in the Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Lab.
Dr. Kaushanskaya’s research focuses on second-language acquisition and bilingualism in children and adults. She directs the Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Laboratory, housed in Goodnight Hall and the Waisman Center. The overall goal of her research program is to uncover the cognitive mechanisms that underlie language learning across the lifespan. The work in the Language Acquisition and Bilingualism lab examines the effects of bilingualism on learning and memory in children and adults; the interplay between linguistic and cognitive factors in shaping language proficiency of bilingual children and adults; and the nature and the developmental trajectory of language impairment in bilingual children.
Representative Publications
Gangopadhyay I, Davidson MM, Ellis Weismer S, Kaushanskaya M. (2016) The role of nonverbal working memory in morphosyntactic processing by school-aged monolingual and bilingual children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 142:171-94. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.09.025.
Yoo J, Kaushanskaya M. (2015) Serial-position effects on a free-recall task in bilinguals. Memory. In Press.
Haebig E, Kaushanskaya M, Ellis Weismer S. (2015) Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 45(12):4109-23. doi: 10.1007/s10803-015-2534-2.
Gross M, Buac M, Kaushanskaya M. (2014) Conceptual scoring of receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 23(4):574-86. doi: 10.1044/2014_AJSLP-13-0026.
Kaushanskaya M, Gross M, Buac M. (2014) Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children. Developmental Science. 17(4):564-83.
Buac M, Kaushanskaya M. (2014) The relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive control skills in bilingual children from low socio-economic backgrounds. Frontiers in Psychology. 26;5:1098. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01098.
Buac M, Gross M, Kaushanskaya M. (2014) The Role of Primary Caregiver Vocabulary Knowledge in the Development of Bilingual Children’s Vocabulary Skills. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research. 1;57(5):1804-16.
Kaushanskaya M, Yoo J, Van Hecke S. (2013) Word learning in adults with second-language experience: effects of phonological and referent familiarity. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research. 56(2):667-78.
Kaushanskaya M, Rechtzigel K. (2012) Concreteness effects in bilingual and monolingual word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. In Press.
Yoo J, Kaushanskaya M. (2012) Phonological memory in bilinguals and monolinguals. Memory and Cognition. Mem Cognit. 2012 Nov;40(8):1314-30.
Kaushanskaya M, Blumenfeld HK, Marian V. (2011) The relationship between vocabulary and short-term memory measures in monolingual and bilingual speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism. Dec;15(4):408-425.
Kaushanskaya M, Marian V, Yoo J. (2011) Gender differences in adult word learning. Acta Psychologica. May;137(1):24-35.
Kaushanskaya M, Marian V. (2009) Bilingualism reduces native-language interference during novel-word learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition. May;35(3):829-35.
Kaushanskaya M, Marian V. (2009) The bilingual advantage in novel word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Aug;16(4):705-10.
Marian V, Kaushanskaya M. (2008) Words, feelings, and bilingualism: Cross-linguistic differences in emotionality of autobiographical memories. The Mental Lexicon. Jan 1;3(1):72-90.
Kaushanskaya M, Marian V. (2008) Mapping phonological information from auditory to written modality during foreign vocabulary learning. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Dec;1145:56-70.