Rene Pierpont

610 Psychology Bldgs University of Wisconsin-Madison Dept of Psychology (WJ Brogden Hall) 1202 West Johnson Street Madison, WI 53706-1696 E-Mail: Phone: (608) 262-1564 Fax: (608) 262-4029

Waisman Center Room 469 1500 Highland Ave. Madison, WI 53705

Graduate Student in Psychology , University of Wisconsin - Madison

M.S in Psychology, 2005, University of Wisconsin
B.S. in Linguistics, 2002, Georgetown University

Research Statement:

I am a graduate student at UW - Madison with an individualized major spanning developmental, cognitive and clinical areas within psychology. My primary focus is language and cognitive development in children with developmental disabilities.

In my research I am interested in understanding how cognitive, medical and genetic factors influence the development of language and communication. I have been involved in several research projects at UW. My first project was an investigation of serial order processing of non-speech auditory sequences. In a series of studies, we examined sequencing abilities in healthy adults to examine the relation of this skill to language ability. See the poster we presented on this topic at the Psychonomic Society conference in Toronto, Canada. In a second study, I'm working in collaboration with Prof. Julia Evans to investigate the sequential processing abilities of children with and without Specific Language Impairment.

For my dissertation research I am conducting a study to investigate the basic language profile of children and young adults with Noonan Syndrome. To see a webpage that describes this project, click here.

In previous research I have examined the cognitive and neural correlates of Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

Publications and Presentations:

Pierpont, E. I., Pierpont, M.E., and Seidenberg, M.S. (in Preparation) Risk factors for communication difficulties in Noonan syndrome.

Pierpont, E.I., Evans, J.L. and Seidenberg, M.S. (in Preparation) Auditory sequence processing in children with and without language impairments.

Pierpont, E. I. (2007) Communication and learning in Noonan syndrome. Invited Workshop at the annual meeting of The Noonan Syndrome Support Group. Baltimore, M.D.

Pierpont, E. I., Seidenberg, M. S. and Pierpont, M. E. (2006) Development of communication and adaptive skills in children with Noonan syndrome. Poster presented at the International Symposium on Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome and Noonan Syndrome. Washington, D.C.

Pierpont, E. I. and Seidenberg, M. S. (2005) Language and auditory sequence processing: individual differences in memory for serial order. Poster presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Toronto, ON.

Ullman, M. T. and Pierpont, E. I. (2005) Specific Language Impairment is not specific to language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis. Cortex, 41 (3), 399-43