Profile: Dr. Janet Werker, 2015 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Gold Medal recipient.
Dr. Janet Werker, a professor in UBC’s Department of Psychology. She is also, in the experience of KidCareCanada Society, generous and committed to sharing her expertise on infant and child development. She is the lead in our “Born to Communicate” captioned video series: https://kidcarecanada.org/video-section/born-communicate
Dr. Werker has just been selected as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) 2015 Gold Medal winner for her outstanding achievements in the field of children’s language acquisition and we are delighted to congratulate her. It is the first time a UBC professor has been awarded this honour.
Her view, and ours, is that babies seek relationships. They learn language from those around them from the moment they are born, and even before and this is why you need to sing, talk and read to your baby.
In a recent interview, Dr. Werker said “the best thing parents can do is to talk to their children from the time they are newborn infants, and to feel free to do so in a way that engages the child’s interest, that involves a back and forth of who vocalizes when, and that focuses on objects and events that are of interest to the child.”
The full interview is here:
UBC professor honoured for research into children’s language acquisition
One again, we congratulate Dr. Werker and hope you will enjoy the videos in our “Born to Communicate” series.