His research focuses on how infants, toddlers, and young children learn words. He studies the cognitive processes that underlie how children learn the meanings of words. He also studies the communication and interaction patterns of parents and their toddlers, and how these patterns support language development. More recently, he has begun to study why infants and toddlers develop language at different rates, and how these differences matter for later development. He is the recipient of graduate and post-doctoral fellowships from the National Science Foundation and a career development award from the National Institutes of Health.