She obtained her Master of Science, then her doctorate, in Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University in Montréal. Before going to Iowa, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Cognitive Science at the Beckman Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Gary Dell. Dr. Gordon’s research focuses on the processes of language production—particularly word retrieval—in adults, and how those processes can be disrupted by aging or brain damage (e.g. a stroke). More recently, Dr. Gordon has also been investigating the contribution of language changes in aging, both positive and negative, to age-related stereotypes.