Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ph.D.

Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ph.D. is the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the most basic building blocks of language and thought as they are developed in early childhood. Specifically, she is interested in uncovering linguistic components that are so basic they will arise in a child’s communication system even if the child has limited access to outside linguistic input. Prof. Goldin-Meadow’s research has also generated more broadly applicable insights into how the spontaneous gestures that learners produce can reveal their readiness to learn language, math, and scientific concepts.

Goldin-Meadow is the author of The Resilience of Language and Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think. Her latest book is Thinking with Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape Our Thoughts (2023).

Goldin-Meadow is the founding editor of Language Learning and Development and has been president of the International Society for Gesture Studies, president of the Cognitive Development Society, chair of the Cognitive Science Society, and president of the Association for Psychological Society (APS).  She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, received the William James award for lifetime achievement in basic research from APS, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. Prof. Goldin-Meadow presented the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago in 2017 and won the Rumelhart Prize for excellence in cognitive research in 2020. She has also received awards from the University of Chicago and the American Psychological Association for both graduate and undergraduate teaching. Her research been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the March of Dimes, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.