Across development, children continually encounter new words and incorporate these words into their vocabulary. This ability to learn new words in turn influences how children process spoken language, which subsequently lays a critical foundation for reading development. A key area in which these relationships are observed is the extent to which children are sensitive to phonological similarity, or overlap in sound information between words (e.g., rhyming words such as cake and lake).

In the first part of the talk, I will review two studies which have revealed that children with reading and language challenges experience difficulties learning, remembering, and processing phonologically similar spoken words. Following this, I will discuss a new study our group is conducting that uses repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test a causal model of word learning and processing in the brain. By performing these studies, our aim is to contribute to the development of brain-informed approaches for promoting optimal language and reading acquisition in individuals with learning challenges.