Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

• Typical and atypical language development in multicultural/bilingual children, with a particular emphasis on Spanish-English
• Development of culturally and linguistic valid assessment and treatment procedures in monolingual and bilingual children
• First language loss in bilingual children and grammatical learning in monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-English speaking typical and atypical children

I am interested in the intersection between the process of language development in child dual language learners and social factors that impact language input and use. As such, I am interested in studying, via both spontaneous discourse and experimental paradigms, children's grammatical skill in both languages and how these intersect or are impacted by child-internal factors (e.g., ability/disability) and child-external factors (e.g., quality of language input, variation in input), as well as how different aspects of language are interrelated, if at all. Within this interest, I am practical at heart, having practiced as a clinician in the field, and also address issues related to best practices in the assessment of language skill in child dual language learners.

As part of my responsibilities within the department, I teach courses in the areas of child language development and disorders, dual language acquisition, and assessment and intervention in speech-language pathology. I also direct the bilingual training program, STEPS, that is part of our M.A. program in speech-language pathology. As a Latina, I have gravitated to working with the Latino community in Bloomington, and have volunteered and served as board member in various Latino grass-roots organizations. I am also an old-timer working as a volunteer at Middle Way House, a safe house for individuals fleeing violence in their homes. Besides volunteering, I love to hang out with my family, and my fabulous pets. I also enjoy immensely going for walks and reading a good book or magazine article outside of the scope of what I do on a daily basis.

Susanna Vargas

Anderson, R. T. (in preparation). Spanish SLI: What do verbs tell us?

Anderson, R. T. (in preparation). Assessing the language skills of dual language learners: A comparison of sampling procedures.

Anderson, R.T. (2012). First language loss in Spanish-speaking children: Patterns of loss and implications for clinical practice. In B. A. Goldstein (Ed.), Bilingual language development and disorders in Spanish-English speakers. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

Centeno, J., & Anderson, R.T. (2011). A preliminary comparison of verb tense production in Spanish speakers with expressive restrictions. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 25, 864-880.