Postdoctoral Researcher, she/her
40 Woodlands Way
Princeton, NJ 08540
Email: cbeech@princeton.edu
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, working with Casey Lew-Williams in the Princeton Baby Lab. My research interests are in psycholinguistics and language development, with a focus on early word learning (infants and young children). I use a combination of experimental and computational approaches, including eye-tracking, behavioral experiments, computer models of language or vision, and statistical analysis of parent-child interaction.
I completed my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Dan Swingley in the Penn Infant Language Center, and members of John Trueswell’s Language Learning Lab. My research has been supported by interdisciplinary training in Computational Approaches to the Neuroscience of Audition and Communication (T32DC016903) and the Language and Communication Sciences (certificate program), as well as an NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship (F31HD113235).
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (Under review). Phonological representation in English-learning infants’ word comprehension.
Beech, C., Shelton, M., & Swingley, D. (2025). Development in the comprehension of phonetically reduced spoken words. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47, 4017-4024. pdf
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (2024). Relating referential clarity and phonetic clarity in infant-directed speech. Developmental Science, 27(2), e13442. pdf
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (2023). Consequences of phonological variation for algorithmic word segmentation. Cognition, 235, 105401. pdf
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (2023). Very young infants’ sensitivity to consonant mispronunciations in word recognition. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45, 792-798. pdf
Beech, C., Shelton, M., & Swingley, D. (July 2025). Development in the comprehension of phonetically reduced spoken words. Poster presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, San Francisco, CA.
Beech, C., Shelton, M., & Swingley, D. (June 2025). Protracted development in toddlers’ understanding of phonetically reduced English nouns. Talk presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, San Sebastian, Spain.
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (November 2024). The challenge of phonological variation in infant-directed speech for models of statistical word segmentation. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Beech, C., Bulgarelli, F., Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (July 2024). Relating properties of parents’ speech to the infant’s referential world. Talk presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies, Glasgow, Scotland.
Beech, C., Shelton, M., & Swingley, D. (November 2023). Using story-guided looking to measure young children's recognition of phonetically reduced words. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (July 2023). Very young infants’ sensitivity to consonant mispronunciations in word recognition. Talk presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Sydney, Australia.
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (June 2022). Relating referential clarity and auditory clarity in infant-directed speech. Poster presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, San Sebastian, Spain.
Beech, C., & Swingley, D. (November 2021). Consequences of phonological variation for word segmentation. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.
Several of my current projects explore how young children manage variability in speech. In normal, connected speech, words’ pronunciations are much more variable than traditional acquisition models (e.g., of word segmentation) assume. Sometimes speakers say “ball” as “buh”, or “back” as “bag”. How do infants and toddlers, who are still learning the words of their language, deal with this kind of variability? Ongoing work is exploring
- how vague infants’ phonological representations of words are early on,
- the effect of repetition contexts on young children's comprehension of variant pronunciations, and
- when children experience clear vs. less clear pronunciations in their language learning environments.
- COGS 1001/PSYC 1333/CIS 1400/LING 1005 Introduction to Cognitive Science (200 students overall, recitation section of 25 students) — Guest Lecturer and Head Teaching Assistant with 10 undergraduate TAs
- PSYC 151/1310 Language and Thought (160 students) — Teaching Assistant
- PSYC 2377 Cognitive Development (60 students) — Teaching Assistant
- CTL Certificate in College and University Teaching
I have also mentored students through the Penn Psychology Department peer mentorship program (PhD student mentee), MindCore Step Ahead Mentorship Program (undergraduate mentee), PennCAP Graduate Student Mentorship Initiative (undergraduate mentee), and Penn Laboratory Experiences in the Natural Sciences summer program (high school mentee).
For science communication, check out Kotoboo, a website that I collaborate on with other early career researchers studying language acquisition. Kotoboo’s articles are aimed at parents and other members of the general public, and are now available in 8 languages!