Jill G. de Villiers (born 1948) is a developmental psychologist known for her work in the field of
language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
.
She holds the position of Professor of Philosophy and Sophia and Austin Smith Professor of Psychology at
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
. de Villiers is a Fellow of the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
. In 2018, she was elected as a Member of
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
.
de Villiers and her colleagues have developed critical tools for
language assessment
Language assessment or language testing is a field of study under the umbrella of applied linguistics. Its main focus is the assessment of first, second or other language in the school, college, or university context; assessment of language use ...
including the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS), which is a computerized preschool language assessment, and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV), which aims to provide assessment for speakers of English dialects such as
African-American English
African-American English (or AAE; also known as Black American English, or Black English in American linguistics) is the set of English sociolects spoken by most Black people in the United States and many in Canada; most commonly, it refers t ...
.
Biography
de Villiers completed her B.S. degree in psychology from the
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...
in 1969.
She attended graduate school at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
where she obtained her Ph.D in experimental psychology at 1974 under the supervision of
Roger Brown. After graduating, she taught at Harvard University for 8 years before moving to Smith College in 1971. At Smith, she received the Honored Professor award in 2003 and the Faculty Teaching award in 2002.
de Villiers work focuses on language acquisition, with a specific focus on young children's ability to use words and sentences to communicate with others. Her many contributions include studies of
language acquisition in oral deaf children and relationships between language development and
theory of mind
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
. de Villiers' research has been funded by the
March of Dimes
March of Dimes is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies. The organization was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, to comba ...
,
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
, the
Institute of Education Sciences
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. IES' stated mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice ...
, and the
.
Books
* de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1978). ''Language acquisitions'' . Harvard University Press.
*de Villiers, J., & Roeper, T. (Eds.). (2011). ''Handbook of generative approaches to language acquisition''. Springer Science & Business Media.
Representative publications
* de Villiers, J. G. (2007). The interface of language and theory of mind. ''Lingua'' , ''117'' (11), 1858–1878.
*de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1973). A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. ''Journal of Psycholinguistic Research'', ''2''(3), 267–278.
*de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1973). Development of the use of word order in comprehension. ''Journal of Psycholinguistic Research'', ''2''(4), 331–341.
*de Villiers, J. G., Flusberg, H. B. T., Hakuta, K., & Cohen, M. (1979). Children's comprehension of relative clauses. ''Journal of Psycholinguistic Research'', ''8''(5), 499–518.
* de Villiers, J. G., & Pyers, J. E. (2002). Complements to cognition: A longitudinal study of the relationship between complex syntax and false-belief-understanding. ''Cognitive Development'' , ''17'' (1), 1037–1060.
References
External links
Faculty Homepage*
{{DEFAULTSORT:de Villiers, Jill
American women psychologists
Developmental psychologists
Smith College faculty
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
1948 births
Living people
American women academics
21st-century American women