Alyson Abel-Mills, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor, Speech Language, San Diego State University
- Director, Language Learning Lab
Contact Info
Personal Links
Biography —
Dr. Abel’s research incorporates behavioral and neurophysiological methods to examine 1) word learning, particularly verb learning, and 2) interactions between word learning and other linguistic domains in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment.
Education —
Selected Publications —
Maguire, M.J., Schneider, J.M., Middleton, A.E., Ralph, Y., Lopez, M., Ackerman, R.A., & Abel, A.D. (in press). Vocabulary knowledge mediates the link between socioeconomic status and word learning in grade school. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Abel, A. D., Maguire, M. J. & Schneider, J. M. (in press). The N400 response indexes word learning from linguistic context in children. Language Learning & Development.
Abel, A. D., Schuele, C. M., Lee, M. W., Arndt, K. B., Blankenship, K. G. (2017). Another look at the influence of maternal education on preschoolers’ performance on two norm-referenced measures. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 38, 231-241
Schneider, J. M., Abel, A. D., Ogiela, D., Middleton, A., & Maguire, M. J. (2016). Developmental differences in beta and theta power during sentence processing. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 19-30.
Abel, A. D., Maguire, M. J., Naqvi, F.M., & Kim, A.Y. (2015). Lexical retrieval of nouns and verbs in sentence completion task. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 44, 545-553.
Maguire, M. J., Abel, A. D., Schneider, J. M., Fitzhugh, A., McCord, J., & Jeevakumar, V. (2015). EEG theta differences between object nouns and action verbs when identifying semantic relations. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 673-683.
Abel, A. D., Rice, M. L. & Bontempo, D. E. (2015). Effects of verb familiarity on finiteness marking in children with SLI. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 58, 360-372.
Abel, A. D., & Schuele, C. M. (2014). The influence of two cognitive-linguistic variables on incidental word learning in five-year-olds. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 43, 447-463.
Maguire, M. J. & Abel, A. D. (2013). What changes in neural oscillations can reveal about developmental cognitive neuroscience: Language development as a case in point. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 6, 125-136.
Selected Presentations —
Abel, A D. (2020). Deficits in word form and meaning acquisition in school-age children with
developmental language disorder. Invited talk at the Annual Convention of the American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Diego, CA (Convention canceled).
Abel, A. D. (2019, August). Neural correlates of word learning in diverse populations. Invited talk
at the Child Language and Literacy Lab Annual Research Retreat, Vanderbilt University.
Abel, A. D. (2018, October). EEG studies of specific language impairment. Invited talk at the
Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Talks.
Abel, A. D., Fishman, I. & Love, T. (2017, October). Neural correlates of specific language
impairment. Invited talk at the Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Workshop.
Abel, A. D. (2015, September). Brain and behavioral correlates of word learning from context.
Invited talk at the Inaugural Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Workshop.
Awards & Honors —
School of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences Outstanding Undergraduate Student Most
Influential Faculty, San Diego State University, 2022
Participant, ASHA Faculty Development Institute, Virtual, 2021
Invited participant, ASHA Grant Review and Reviewer Training (GRRT), Virtual, 2021
Fellow, Grants and Research Enterprise Writing Fellowship, San Diego State University,
2019
School of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences Outstanding Graduate Student Most
Influential Faculty, San Diego State University, 2019
Grants & Other Funded Activity —
National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Deafness and other Communicative
Disorders (NIH-NIDCD) R21 DC018865-02S1, Semantic learning deficits in school age
children with developmental language disorder; Diversity supplement, $74,285; Role: PI;
August 2021
National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Deafness and other Communicative
Disorders (NIH-NIDCD) R21 DC018865-01, Semantic learning deficits in school age
children with developmental language disorder; $300,000; Role: PI; August 2020
NIH/NIDCD R21, Electrophysiological correlates of language processing in minimally verbal children
with ASD: Elucidating pathways to language impairment, Role: Consultant (Charlotte
DiStefano, PI)
National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Deafness and other Communicative
Disorders (NIH-NIDCD) R01 DC017736, Auditory precursors of language delay in toddlers
with autism spectrum disorders; Role: Co-PI (Ralph-Axel Mueller, PI); June 2019
Memberships —
University of California-San Diego Clinical and Translational Research Institute, Member,
2016 - present
SDSU Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, Core faculty, 2014 - present
American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, 2005 – present
Society for the Neurobiology of Language, 2015 - present