Rate My Professor Hanako Yoshida

Her research centers on language learning mechanisms that produce specialized cognitive systems in young children, derived from domain-general processes through attention fine-tuning and contextual cueing. Yoshida investigates early attention and language development, word learning, bilingual cognition, cross-linguistic category learning, parental scaffolding, and gesture adaptations in children with autism spectrum disorders. Key publications include Perkovich et al. (2024), Conducting head-mounted eye-tracking research with young children with autism, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Sun et al. (2024), Early development of saliency-driven attention through object manipulation, Acta Psychologica; Perkovich et al. (2022), What children with and without ASD see, Autism & Developmental Language Impairments; Yoshida et al. (2020), Parents’ gesture adaptations to children with autism spectrum disorders, Journal of Child Language; Burling & Yoshida (2019), Visual constancies amidst changes in handled objects for 5- to 24-month-old infants, Child Development; Tran et al. (2018), Early executive function: The influence of culture and bilingualism, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition; and Burling & Yoshida (2017), Highlighting in early childhood: Learning biases through attentional shifting, Cognitive Science. She received the 2019 University of Houston Faculty Excellence Award for Undergraduate Research Mentor, the 2006 Irving Saltzman Award from Indiana University, and other honors. Yoshida serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Developmental Psychology since 2010 and reviews for journals like Cognition, Developmental Science, Child Development, and funding agencies including NSF and NIH.