Description

This initiative encourages researchers to expand the scope of language science by diversifying the representation of learners, languages, cultures, contexts, and geographic locations studied. The goal is to catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations and promote the use of varied behavioral or neural methodologies—including computational modeling and artificial intelligence—to develop more generalizable and replicable theories in the language and communication sciences. The effort responds to the overrepresentation of specific language groups and contexts in research, seeking innovative approaches that integrate diverse perspectives and sampling practices to better understand language development, structure, processing, and their neural and cognitive bases.

Projects may address topics such as:

• Language acquisition in diverse sociolinguistic settings (e.g., bilingual/multilingual or bi-dialectical communities)
• Socioeconomic and cultural effects on language development
• Neuroscientific studies in underrepresented language communities
• Cross-linguistic variation in language processing

Proposals must clearly articulate how their approach to diversification will impact the development of generalizable theories in language science.