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The Bergelson Lab (aka BLAB) is a part of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies group within the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. 

We study infant word learning, in particular how infants’ early linguistic and environmental input plays a role in their learning. We focus on understanding how babies learn words from the visual, social, and linguistic world around them.

In our research, we employ a multi-faceted approach to investigate word learning in infants, utilizing eye-tracking, audio discrimination, electroencephalography (EEG), and corpus analysis. Each of these tools allows us to gain insight into different aspects of how infants acquire language. We aim to uncover the mechanisms that support early language development and how infants acquire the ability to understand and produce words.
 

The BLAB moved to Harvard from Duke University in 2023. And it moved to Duke in 2016 from the University of Rochester, where it finished data collection in July 2016 for a longitudinal study called SEEDLingS (Study of Environmental Effects on Developing Linguistic Skills).

We seek to understand the processes underlying early language acquisition in infants. Our work aims to unravel how infants learn to map words to meanings, how they process language input, and how various factors—such as social interaction, language exposure, and sensory input—influence this process.

The BLAB is part of Harvard's Laboratory for Developmental Studies (LDS).

This research group has looked at infant and child development for many years with the help of parents and children in the greater Boston area. Our projects have revealed complex cognitive, social, emotional, and language abilities in babies and children.