Faculty

Holly L. Storkel

Associate Professor
Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders
Lawrence Campus

Phone: (785) 864-0497 (office)
Phone: (785) 864-4428 (lab)
FAX: (785) 864-3974

hstorkel@ku.edu

B.A., 1993, Indiana University
M.S., 1995, University of Washington
Ph.D., 1998, University of Washington
NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow, 2001, Indiana University

Director, Word and Sound Learning Lab

Research

The long-term goal of Professor Storkel's research program is to determine how preschool children learn and organize the words of the language with the ultimate intent of applying this knowledge to clinical populations. Children acquiring a language are faced with at least two tasks related to words: learning new words and organizing these in memory to uniquely distinguish each word from every other. During this process, children are also learning the sound system of the language, and it is likely that advances in word and sound learning influence one another. The specific aims of the research program are:

1. to identify the processes underlying learning of new words and to describe the structure of word representations in preschool children;
2. to document the influence of sound development on word learning and representations in preschool children;
3. to examine these same processes in children with delayed vocabulary and/or sound development to provide evidence concerning the nature of these apparent delays.

The findings to emerge have the potential to extend current theories of word learning and to inform theories concerning the relationship between language perception and production.

Selected Publications

Storkel, H. L. & Adlof, S. M. (2009a). Adult and child semantic neighbors of the Kroll and Potter (1984) nonobjects. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 289-305.

Storkel, H. L. & Adlof, S. M. (2009b). The effect of semantic set size on word learning by preschool children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 306-320.

Storkel, H. L. (2009). Developmental differences in the effects of phonological, lexical, and semantic variables on word learning by infants. Journal of Child Language, 36, 291-321.

Storkel, H. L., Armbruster, J., & Hogan, T. P. (2006). Differentiating phonotactic probability and neighborhood density in adult word learning. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 1175-1192.

Storkel, H. L. (2006). Do children still pick and choose? The relationship between phonological knowledge and lexical acquisition beyond 50-words. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20, 523-529.

Adlof, S. M. & Storkel, H. L. (2006). Learning vocabulary through reading. ACQuiring Knowledge in Speech, Language, and Hearing, 8, 110-112.

Hoover, J. R. & Storkel, H. L. (2006). Using nonword repetition in vocabulary assessment. ACQuiring Knowledge in Speech, Language, and Hearing, 8, 106-109.

Maekawa, J. & Storkel, H. L. (2006). Dynamic assessment and word learning. ACQuiring Knowledge in Speech, Language, and Hearing, 8, 103-105.

Maekawa, J. & Storkel, H. L. (2006). Individual differences in the influence of phonological characteristics on expressive vocabulary development by young children. Journal of Child Language, 33 439-459.