Samantha Durrant
Researcher
A bit about Samantha Durrant
I currently split my time between two roles, both at the University of Manchester. Half of my time is spent working as a Lecturer in Psychology on the Speech and Language Therapy programme and with the other half of my time I work on a LuCiD project with Dr Katie Twomey as a post-doctoral research associate. My research interests are focused on using a range of methods (naturalistic and experimental) to understand the influence of the environment, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, on language development in young children.
I completed my PhD at the University of Plymouth looking at the impact of linguistic variation on children’s early representations. After earning my PhD I joined LuCiD as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool and spent 5 years working on the longitudinal Language 0-5 Project with Caroline Rowland. We tracked the development of 90 children from 6 months until they were 4.5 years collecting data on a range of different abilities. I am using the video data from when these children were 11 months old in my current post-doctoral project.
My Role in LuCiD
In LuCiD I am a post-doctoral research associate working on the LuCiD work package linking curiosity-driven behaviour with language development in the research stream beyond 0-5. This project seeks to use naturalistic data from the Language 0-5 Project to explore the relationship between curiosity behaviours, specifically interactions with objects, and language development in 11 month olds.
LuCiD publications (34) by Samantha Durrant
Monaghan, P., Donnelly, S., Alcock, K., Bidgood, A., Cain, K., Durrant, S., Frost, R. L. A., Jago, L., Peter, M. S., Pine, J. M., Turnbull, H., & Rowland, C. F. (2023). Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children’s language skills 3 years later. Cognitive Psychology
Lee, C., Jessop, A., Bidgood, A., Peter, M., Pine, J., Rowland, C. & Durrant, S. (2023). How executive functioning, sentence processing, and vocabulary are related at 3 years of age Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Byers-Heinlein, K., Tsui, RK-Y., van Renswoude, D., Black, A., Barr, R., Brown, A., Colomer, M., Durrant, S., Gampe, A., Gonzalez-Gomez, N., Hay, J.F., Hernik, M., Jartó, M., Kovács, A.M., ... (2021). The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study Infancy. 26: 4–38.
Durrant, S., Jessop, A., Chang, F., Bidgood, A., Peter, M. S., Pine, J. M. & Rowland, C. F. (2021). Does the understanding of complex dynamic events at 10 months predict vocabulary development? Language and Cognition 13, 66–98.
Samanta, S., Bannard, C., Pine, J. & The Language05 Team (2020). Can automated gesture recognition support the study of child language development? In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Toronto, ON: Cognitive Science Society.
Frost, R. L. A., Jessop, A., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Bidgood, A. Pine, J., Rowland, C. & Monaghan, P. (2020). Non-adjacent dependency learning in infancy, and its link to language development. Cognitive Psychology, 120, 101291.
Peter, M. S., Durrant, S., Jessop, A., Bidgood, A., Pine, J. M. & Rowland, C. F. (2019). Does speed of processing or vocabulary size predict later language growth in toddlers? Cognitive Psychology, 115, 101238.
Delle Luche, C., Kwok, R., Durrant, S., Chow, J., Horvath, K., Cattani, A., Abbot-Smith, K., Krott, A., Mills, D., Plunkett, K., Rowland, C., Floccia, C. (2016). It's a big world: Understanding the factors guiding early vocabulary development in bilinguals. International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, USA.
Bidgood, A., Cameron-Faulkner, T., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Rowland, C. (2015). Multimodal input and children's gesture and vocabulary growth. Workshop on Extensive and Intensive Recordings of Children's Language Environment (WEIRCLE), Paris, France.
Bidgood, A., Cameron-Faulkner, T., Peter, M., Durrant, S., Rowland, C. (2016). The role of showing and pointing in the vocabulary growth of children aged 8-15 months. International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, USA.
Durrant, S., Delle Luche, C., Cattani, A., Floccia, C. (2015). Monodialectal and multidialectal infants' representation of familiar words. Journal of Child Language, 42(2), 447-465.
Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., Floccia, C., Plunkett, K. (2014). Implicit meaning in 18-month-old toddlers. Developmental Science, 17(6), 948-955.
Bidgood, A., McLaughlin, P., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2018). The relationship between oral-motor skills and 2 years, vocabulary production and later articulation skills. Paper presented at the Child Language Symposium, Reading, UK.
Durrant, S., Delle Luche, C., Chow, J., Plunkett, K., & Floccia, C. (2017). A tale of two cities – rhoticity. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development. Texas, USA.
Durrant, S., Delle Luche, C., Ratnage, P., & Floccia, C. (2017). Dialectal variation in disambiguation. Paper presented at the 14th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Lyon, France.
Peter, M., Bidgood, A., Durrant, S., Pine, J., Rowland, C. (2018). Investigating the relationship between language processing efficiency, vocabulary, and working memory across development. Paper presented at Child Language Symposium, Reading, UK.
Frost, R., Rowland, C., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Bidgood, A., Monaghan, P. (2018). Statistical learning in infants, and its relationship with language development: A study of nonadjacent dependency learning. Paper presented at 26th Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP), Berlin, Germany.
Frost, R., Peter, M., Durrant, S., Bidgood, A., Rowland, C., Monaghan, P., Christiansen, M. (2016). How do infants use nonadjacent dependencies during language development? (1) Poster presented at Fifth Implicit Learning Seminar Lancaster, UK.
Delle Luche, C., Kwok, R., Durrant, S., Chow, J., Plunkett, K., & Floccia, C. (2017). The organisation of the bilingual lexicon: the impact of linguistic distance on semantic activation. Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Lyon, France.
Keren-Portnoy, T., Floccia, C., DePaolis, R., Duffy, H., Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., White, L., Goslin, J., & Vihman, M. (2017). A robust failure to replicate word segmentation findings in British-English infants. Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Lyon, France.
Durrant, S., Peter, M., Bidgood, A., McLaughlin, P., & Rowland, C. (2017). Executive Function and Language in Typically Developing Toddlers. Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Lyon, France.
Durrant, S., Peter, M., Bidgood, A., Monaghan, P., Frost, R., Bannard, C., Kidd, E., & Rowland, C. (2017). Does variation in infants statistical learning ability predict variation in later vocabulary growth? Lessons learned from the Language 0-5 Project. Paper presented at the European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Utrecht, Holland.
Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., Ratnage, P., & Floccia, C. (2017). The impact of accent exposure in a word learning task. Paper presented at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany.
Durrant, S. (2017). Book review: Eve Clark, Language in children. First Language, 37(5), 530–532.
Durrant, S., Rowland, C. F. , Chang, F., Jessop, A., Bidgood, A., Peter, M. (2016). Chasing, causality and goals: Conceptual understanding at 9 months and its relationship to later language use. Paper presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Bidgood, A., Cameron-Faulkner, T., Durrant, S., Peter, M. & Rowland, C.F. (2016). The role of gestures and babble in the vocabulary growth of children aged 8-18 months. Paper presented at the 1st Lancaster Conference on Infant and Child Development, Lancaster, UK.
Bidgood, A., Kirk, E., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Pine, J. & Rowland, C. (2018). Baby sign, mind-mindedness and language development. (1) Poster presented at The 3rd Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (LCICD), Lancaster, UK.
Bidgood, A., Kirk, E., Durrant, S., Peter, M., Pine, J. & Rowland, C. (2018). Baby sign, mind-mindedness and language development. Poster presented at the 8th International Society for Gesture Studies Conference, Cape Town, South Africa.
Abbot-Smith, K., Imai, M., Durrant, S., & Nurmsoo, E. (2016). The role of timing and prototypical causality on how pre-schoolers fast-map novel verb meanings. First Language. doi:10.1177/0142723716679800
Floccia, C., Keren-Portnoy, T., DePaolis, R., Duffy, H., Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., White, L., Goslin, J., & Vihman, M. (2016). British English infants segment words only with exaggerated infant-directed speech stimuli. Cognition, 148, 1-9
Delle Luche, C., Durrant, S., Poltrock, S., Floccia, C. (2015). A methodological investigation of the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm: Methods of analyses, picture selection and data rejection criteria. Infant Behaviour and Development, 40, 151-72
Frost, R. L. A., Peter, M., Durrant, S., Bidgood, A., Rowland, C., Monaghan, P. & Christiansen, M. H. (2016). How do infants use nonadjacent dependencies during language development? Poster presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Frost, R. L. A., Peter, M., Durrant, S., Bidgood, A., Rowland, C., Monaghan, P. & Christiansen, M. H. (2016). How do infants use nonadjacent dependencies during language acquisition? Poster to be presented at the Fifth Implicit Learning Seminar. Lancaster, UK.
Serratrice, L. & Durrant, S. (2015). Confused? Nursery World Magazine, 21 September, 22-24.