Sandy LaTourrette

Nice to meet you! Please call me Sandy: it's the Scottish nickname for Alexander, which is my given (and publishing) name. But everyone calls me Sandy, and as my research shows, the names we use matter.

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I'm a cognitive scientist studying the development of language and cognition. I currently serve as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Southern California, where I run the Child Learning & Development Lab (CHILD Lab for short).  My research investigates how humans learn language and how learning language influences the way we learn about the world. My work has been supported by the NIH and NSF and published in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy, Child Development, Cognition, Developmental Science, and the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.  

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I received my Ph.D. at Northwestern University, working with Sandra Waxman, Lance Rips, and Adriana Weisleder. My dissertation examined how labeling objects changes the way infants remember and categorize them. I then completed a NRSA post-doctoral fellowship with John Trueswell and Charles Yang at the University of Pennsylvania, studying  mechanisms of word learning in children and adults. After completing my post-doc, I also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, where my courses included Language & Thought, Communicating Psychological Science, and Cognition, and Foundations of Psychology.