Publications

Articles

Yuan, L., Singell, E., Zhu, L. Z., Mix, K. S., & Smith, L. B. (under review). How are compositional systems learned? Four Hypotheses and Insights from Symbolic Numbers.

Hochmann, J.-R., Zhu, L. Z., Kroupin, I., & Carey, S. (under review). Hard Words Despite Early Concepts: The Acquisition of “Same” and “Different”. [preprint]

Zhu, L. Z. & Yuan, L., (under review). From Components to Compositionality: A Case Study of Cross-Linguistic Differences in Number Learning Without Cross-Cultural Confounds.

Zhu, L. Z., Amatuni, A., Egan-Dailey, S., Garrison, H., Kalenkovich, E., Koorathota, S., Righter, L., Tor, S., & Bergelson, E. (revise & resubmit). Experience Shapes Early Noun Comprehension from 8-18 Months: The Roles of Word Frequency and Referent Familiarity. [preprint]

Zhu, R., Kilonzo, T. N., Zhu, L. Z., Fan, J., & Frank, M. C. (2026). Cross-contextual variability in children’s early understanding of visual media. Topics in Cognitive Science, 18, e70034. [preprint] [publisher]

Zhu, R., Goddu, M. K., Zhu, L. Z., & Gopnik, A. (2024). Preschoolers’ comprehension of functional metaphors. Open Mind, 8, 924-949. [preprint] [publisher]

Zhu, Z., & Nguyen, A. (2022). The interaction between structure, discourse, and prosody in wh-questions in English. Proceedings of the Fifty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, IL, 501-517. [pdf]

Conference Presentations

Dong R. Y., Moore C., Zhu, L. Z., & Bergelson E. (2026). Parent-reported noun frequency predicts infants’ online noun comprehension in an eyetracking task. Poster presented at the Cognitive Development Society Biennial Conference 2026, Montréal, Canada.

Zhu, L. Z., Bergelson E., & Snedeker, J. (2026) Compositional Thought Before Compositional Language: Evidence from 9-11-Month-Olds. Poster presented at the 16th Annual Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary. [poster] [SI]

Zhu, L. Z., Kalenkovich, E., Dong Y., Righter L., & Bergelson E. (2025). Experience Shapes Early Noun Comprehension from 8-18 Months: The Roles of Word Frequency and Referent Familiarity. Oral presentation at the 50th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. [slides]

Dong Y., Moore C., Zhu, L. Z., & Bergelson E. (2025). Measuring early word exposure in infants: a low-cost parent-report survey captures individual language input and predicts vocabulary outcomes. Poster presented at the 50th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. [poster]

Zhu, Z., Nguyen, A. (2022). The interaction between structure, discourse, and prosody in wh-questions in English. Oral presentation at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, IL. [proceedings]