Directory

Biography

Dr. Megan Blossom joined the Castleton Psychology Department in the Fall of 2014. Her area of expertise is the interdisciplinary field of child language which brings together perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, and communication disorders to understand human language development and language processing. Her teaching interests are in the areas of cognitive psychology, cognitive development, and language development. Prior to joining the faculty at Castleton, she was a lecturer in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences & Disorders at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Blossom has conducted psycholinguistic research with infants, toddlers, school-age children with and without language impairments, as well as adults. Her current work examines assessment of linguistic knowledge in toddlers with a particular focus on the development of grammatical knowledge that is vulnerable in children with language impairments. The goal of this work is to better understand grammatical development so that children with language impairments can be identified as early as possible. She welcomes student involvement in her research and looks forward to mentoring students interested in gaining research experience in the areas of language development and language processing.

Education

Ph.D., University of Kansas
M.A., University of Kansas
B.S., Brown University

Accomplishments

Recent Publications & Conference Presentations:

• Storkel, H., Brady, N., & Blossom, M. (2014) Infusing Research Into the Undergraduate Curriculum: Consideration of Skill Progression. Oral presentation at The Annual Conference of the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders, Orlando, FL.
• Blossom, M. & Colombo, J. (2013). Assessing two-year-olds’ knowledge of “is” and “are.” Poster presentation at the Society for Research on Child Development Biennial Meeting, Seattle, WA.
• Rice, M. L. & Blossom, M. (2013) What do children with SLI do with multiple forms of DO? Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 56, 222-235.
• Rice, M.L., Smolik, F., Perpich, D., Thompson, T., Rytting, N., Blossom, M. (2010). Mean length of utterance levels in 6-month intervals for children 3-9 years with and without language impairments. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53, 333-349.
• Soderstrom, M., Blossom, M., Foygel, I., & Morgan, J.L. (2008). Acoustical cues and grammatical units in speech to two preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language, 35, 869-902