Gisela Jia

Education

Ph. D Psychology 1998 New York University

M. A. Psychology 1995 New York University

M. A. Linguistics 1991 Beijing University

B. A. English Literature 1988 Beijing University

My research has a theoretical as well as a practical focus. Theoretically, I utilize the immigration phenomenon to construct and test theories of second language acquisition. Practically, my research findings bear on issues such as the diagnosis of bilingual speech/language problems, bilingual education, and the acculturation of immigrant children. This is a particularly opportune time to do research in these areas because immigration has become such an important global phenomenon. In the United States, 20% of school children are currently immigrants. Personally, this line of research is very meaningful because I am an immigrant myself, having moved to the US from China to pursue my graduate studies. My students, colleagues and I have conducted both laboratory studies and longitudinal field research with Chinese, Hispanic and Russian immigrant children and adults. Some of our findings are reported in detail or summarized in the following articles. My research has been and continues to be supported by National Institute of Health.

Peer Reviewed Journals

Jia, G., Kohnert, K., Collado, J., & Aquino-Garcia, F. Action naming in Spanish and English among sequential bilinguals.  (in press) Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

Jia, G., Strange, W., Wu, Y. H., Collado, J., & Guan, Q. (2006) Age differences in non-native vowel perception and production vary with among of amount of exposure to the new language. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 119(2), 1118-1130.

Jia, G. (2003). The Acquisition of English Plurals by Native Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Children and Adolescents. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 22, 1632-1642.

Jia, G., & Aaronson, D. (2003). A longitudinal study of Chinese children and adolescents learning English in the U.S. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24(1), 131-161.

Jia, G., Aaronson, D., & Wu, Y. H. (2002). Long-term language attainment of bilingual immigrants: Predictive factors and language group differences. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23(4), 599-621.

            McElree, B., Jia, G., & Litvak, A. (2000). The time-course of conceptual processing in three bilingual populations. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 229 – 254.

Book Chapters

Jia, G. (in press). Native Chinese speakers learning English as a second language. In Li, P., Bates, E., Tan, L. H., & Tzeng, O. J. L. (Eds.), Handbook of Chinese Psycholinguistics (pp. 61 – 69). Cambridge University Press.

Jia, G., Aaronson, D., Young, D., Chen, S., & Wagner, J. (2005). Bilingual Mandarin-, Russian- and Spanish-English speakers’ grammatical proficiency in their two languages.  In M. Minami, H. Kobayashi, M. Nakayama, and H. Sirai (Eds.), Studies in Language Sciences, Vol. 4 (pp. 160-171). Japan: Kurosio Publishers.

Jia, G. (2004). The acquisition of English and maintenance of native language by immigrants in North America. In I. Siegel (Series Ed.), U. Gielen & X. Jaipaul (Vol. Eds.), Advances in applied developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence in Cross-cultural perspective (pp.350-373). Ablex: Greenwood Press.