Child Development
The research of Anne Marie Adams, Amy Bidgood, and Fiona Simmons collectively spans developmental psychology, language acquisition, and the cognitive foundations of children’s academic skills.
Anne Marie’s work:
- examines the relationships between working memory and writing
- explores how verbal and visuospatial memory processes shape children’s literacy development
Amy specialises in:
- early language and communicative development
- investigating phonology, syntax, gesture, play, and the factors that influence children’s language growth in the first years of life, including through longitudinal studies such as the Language 0–5 Project
Fiona Specialises in:
- the development of early numeracy including the role of cognition, the home learning environment and mathematics anxiety
- the development of early literacy including the interaction between cognitive and environmental factors
Together, their research provides a comprehensive picture of how cognitive, linguistic, and environmental factors shape children’s learning trajectories.