MEL Lab
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Welcome to the Minds, Experiences, and Language (MEL) Lab!
Our lab, directed by Dr. Monica Ellwood-Lowe, studies children's language and brain development, and how children and the people who care for them adapt to their environments. How do families adjust when resources are tight? When and how are children's brains most plastic? What kinds of skills do children develop as a result of different kinds of early experiences? Housed within the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, we seek to work with and for the community to develop and translate our research findings.
Our methods
In our research, we use a range of methods, spanning day-long recordings of family environments, functional and structural MRI, eye-tracking, experience sampling approaches, and natural experiment designs.