Larissa K. Samuelson is a Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Samuelson received a BS with honors from Indiana University in 1993 and a joint Ph.D. in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Indiana University in 2000. From 2000-2015 she was a member of the faculty in the Psychology Department at the University of Iowa in the United States before moving to the UEA in the United Kingdom in 2015. 

Her research broadly examines processes of cognitive development and executive function with a focus on early word and category learning incorporating connectionist and dynamic neural field models to understand how children process information and learn words. A significant aspect of her research program involves understanding how children use their prior knowledge of words and categories to quickly learn new words and increase their vocabulary. Her current research focus is on how early cognitive processes support vocabulary development with the aim of developing personalized interventions to ensure all toddlers can reach their early language potential.

She is the recipient of the J.R. Kantor Graduate Award in 2000 from the Department of Psychology at Indiana University, and in 2010, she received the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of developmental psychology. Prof. Samuelson’s primary source of funding has been the National Institutes of Health in the United States, that funded her research program continuously from 2004-2022. She has also been awarded grants from the US National Science Foundation and from the International Program Development Fund and the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney. Her current work is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. 

UEA Developmental Dynamics Laboratory