Rate My Professor Margaret Kjelgaard

Kjelgaard's longstanding research examines how human listeners comprehend spoken language, focusing on prosody—the rhythm and tune of speech—and its role in language processing. This interest has extended to investigating differences in prosody perception and comprehension among autistic individuals. In collaboration with MIT colleagues, she has helped develop a theory that attributes autism symptoms to atypical predictive processing of unfolding events. Her expertise spans autism, neurodiversity, language development, and psycholinguistics. Key publications include "An Investigation of Language Impairment in Autism: Implications for Genetic Subgroups" (2001), cited over 1,500 times; "Autism as a Disorder of Prediction" (2014); "Shared Neuroanatomical Substrates of Impaired Phonological Working Memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Dyslexia" (2016); "Autonomic and Electrophysiological Evidence for Reduced Auditory Habituation in Autism" (2021); "Altered Engagement of the Speech Motor Network is Associated with Reduced Phonological Working Memory in Autism" (2022); and "Interceptive Abilities in Autism Spectrum Disorder" (2024). With 35 publications and approximately 2,700 citations, her work has advanced knowledge of speech processing, sensory habituation, and motor prediction in neurodiverse populations.