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Heather Bortfeld

Heather Bortfeld

Title: Associate Professor
Departmental Program: Developmental
E-mail: heather.bortfeld@uconn.edu
Office: BOUS 151
Office Phone: (860) 486-0919

Department of Psychology
406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269-1020

Preferred Means of Contact: E-mail

Lab web page

Research Interests:

  • Infant speech perception
  • First and second language development
  • Figurative language processing
  • Speech disfluencies
  • Infant neuropsychology

Undergraduate courses:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Topics in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Graduate courses:

  • Neurophysiological Methods in Developmental Research

Representative Publications:

  • Bortfeld, H., Fava, E., & Boas, D. (2009).  Identifying cortical lateralization of speech processing in infants using near-infrared spectroscopy.  Developmental Neuropsychology, 34, 52-65.
  • Bortfeld, H., Wruck, E., & Boas, D. (2007).  Assessing infants’ cortical response to speech using near-infrared spectroscopy. NeuroImage, 34, 407-415.
  • Bortfeld, H., Morgan, J., Golinkoff, R., & Rathbun, K. (2005).  Mommy and me: Familiar names help launch babies into speech stream segmentation.  Psychological Science, 16, 298-304.
  • Bortfeld, H. (2003).  Comprehending idioms cross-linguistically.  Experimental Psychology, 50, 1-15.
  • Bortfeld, H., Leon, S., Bloom, J., Schober, M., & Brennan, S. (2001).  Disfluency rates in conversation: Effects of age, relationship, topic, role, and gender.  Language and Speech, 44, 123-147.
  • Bortfeld, H., & McGlone, M. (2001). The continuum of metaphor processing.  Metaphor and Symbol, 16, 75-86.
  • Bortfeld, H., & Brennan, S. (1997). Use and acquisition of idiomatic expressions in referring by native and non-native speakers. Discourse Processes, 23, 21-49.