Helen Tager-Flusberg is an American psychologist who is professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Science at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

and the Departments of Anatomy and Neurobiology and Pediatrics at

Boston University School of Medicine The Boston University School of Medicine (formally the Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine) is the medical school of Boston University, a private university, private research university in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in ...

(BUSM). She is the Director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University.

Personal life and education

Tager-Flusberg was born in England. She received her bachelor's degree from the

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

in psychology. She moved to the US in the 1970s and obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1978. Her dissertation compared children with autism to children with severe developmental language disorders in studies on syntax, semantics and object play. She was a professor in the psychology department at the

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the Public university, public university system of the Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes six campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts Lowell ...

(UMass) until 2001, and between 1996 and 2001, she was a Senior Scientist at the UMass Medical Center. She has been at Boston University since 2001, initially at the School of Medicine and since 2009 in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Career

Her research interests are in

autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...

Williams syndrome Williams syndrome (WS), also Williams–Beuren syndrome (WBS), is a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body. Facial features frequently include a broad forehead, underdeveloped chin, short nose, and full cheeks. Mild to moderate int ...

, Down syndrome, and

specific language impairment Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child's language does not develop normally and the difficulties cannot be accounted for by generally slow development, physical abnormality of the speech apparatus, autism spectrum disorder, a ...

, which she has researched since the late 70s.

Appointments

Tager-Flusberg was President of the International Society for Autism Research (2011–2013), and served on the National Deafness and Communication Disorders Advisory Council from 2012 to 2016. She is on the editorial boards of ''

Autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...

'' and '' Autism Research''; and an Associate Editor of the ''

British Journal of Psychology The ''British Journal of Psychology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed psychology journal. It was established in 1904 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the British Psychological Society. The editor-in-chief is Stefan R. Schweinberger ...

'' and is Associate Editor for the '' Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders''.

Recognition

Ken Wexler, a professor of cognitive science at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, said: "If you asked somebody, 'Who are the famous people studying language in autism?' she's the first name to come to mind."

Selected publications

As of 2012, Tager-Flusberg has edited four books and published more than 200 journal articles and individual chapters in books; some of her books are: * * * * *

References

External links

Helen Tager-Flusberg
publications indexed by

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

Tager-Flusberg Downs syndrome corpus
in

CHILDES The Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) is a corpus established in 1984 by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow to serve as a central repository for data of first language acquisition. Its earliest transcripts date from the 1960s, and as ...

Tager-Flusberg ASD corpus
in

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tager-Flusberg, Helen American Jews Autism researchers Boston University faculty 21st-century American psychologists Experimental psychologists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American women psychologists