Dr Amy Bidgood

School of Psychology

I am a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. I joined LJMU in 2022 from the University of Salford, where I had been a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology for the previous four years. I have also been a researcher at the Universities of Liverpool and York, including working on the Language 0-5 Project, a longitudinal project following children's language development over the first five years of life.

My research focuses on young children's language and communicative development. I have studied phonological development (the sounds of speech) and syntax (grammar) development, as well as the impact of play and gesture. My PhD looked at how children learn to stop making certain grammatical mistakes in their speech. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Salford, I have been studying children's digital media use, including how this can affect parent-child interaction and language development. I also led the Salford Autism Exercise Project, which investigated the effect of swimming lessons on the sleep of autistic children, and whether this could have an impact on their ability to learn new words.

I am interested in hearing from potential PhD students who would like to investigate language and communicative development in infancy/early childhood. This might include spoken language and/or gesture, parent-child communication (including in play), and/or factors affecting these. I am happy to discuss any ideas you might have, so that I can support you in developing you research proposal.

Degrees

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, PhD Psychology
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, MA Applied Linguistics
University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, PGCE Post-Compulsory Education with ESOL Subject Specialism
University of York, United Kingdom, BA (Hons.) Languages and Linguistics

Highlighted publications

Bidgood A, Taylor G, Kolak J, Bent EM, Hickman N. 2022. A balanced digital diet for under 5s: A commentary on Orben (2021) Infant and Child Development, 31 DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Bidgood A, Pine J, Rowland C, Sala G, Freudenthal D, Ambridge B. 2021. Verb argument structure overgeneralisations for the English intransitive and transitive constructions: grammaticality judgments and production priming Language and Cognition, 13 :397-437 DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Journal article

Lee C, Jessop A, Bidgood A, Peter MS, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Durrant S. 2023. How executive functioning, sentence processing, and vocabulary are related at 3 years of age Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 233 DOI Author Url Publisher Url

Galpin A, Bidgood A, Taylor G. 2023. The multiple roles of media use within the family system during lockdown: A thematic analysis of parental reports from the UK Children and Society, DOI Publisher Url

Ambridge B, Doherty L, Maitreyee R, Tatsumi T, Zicherman S, Mateo Pedro P, Kawakami A, Bidgood A, Pye C, Narasimhan B, Arnon I, Bekman D, Efrati A, Fabiola Can Pixabaj S, Marroquín Pelíz M, Julajuj Mendoza M, Samanta S, Campbell S, McCauley S, Berman R, Misra Sharma D, Bhaya Nair R, Fukumura K. 2022. Testing a computational model of causative overgeneralizations: Child judgment and production data from English, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese and K’iche’ Open Research Europe, 1 DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Bidgood A, Taylor G, Kolak J, Bent EM, Hickman N. 2022. A balanced digital diet for under 5s: A commentary on Orben (2021) Infant and Child Development, 31 DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Home J, Bidgood A, Kalipershad S. 2021. The Junior Doctor Shadow Board BMJ Leader, DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Ambridge B, Doherty L, Maitreyee R, Tatsumi T, Zicherman S, Mateo Pedro P, Kawakami A, Bidgood A, Pye C, Narasimhan B, Arnon I, Bekman D, Efrati A, Fabiola Can Pixabaj S, Marroquín Pelíz M, Julajuj Mendoza M, Samanta S, Campbell S, McCauley S, Berman R, Misra Sharma D, Bhaya Nair R, Fukumura K. 2021. Testing a computational model of causative overgeneralizations: Child judgment and production data from English, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese and K’iche’ Open Research Europe, 1 :1-1 DOI Publisher Url

Bidgood A, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Ambridge B. 2020. Syntactic Representations Are Both Abstract and Semantically Constrained: Evidence From Children’s and Adults’ Comprehension and Production/Priming of the English Passive Cognitive Science, 44 :e12892 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Durrant S, Jessop A, Chang F, Bidgood A, Peter MS, Pine JM, Rowland CF. 2020. Does the understanding of complex dynamic events at 10 months predict vocabulary development? Language and Cognition, 13 :66-98 DOI Publisher Url Public Url

Ambridge B, Bidgood A, Thomas K. 2020. Disentangling syntactic, semantic and pragmatic impairments in ASD: Elicited production of passives Journal of Child Language, 48 :184-201 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Frost RLA, Jessop A, Durrant S, Peter MS, Bidgood A, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Monaghan P. 2020. Non-adjacent dependency learning in infancy, and its link to language development Cognitive Psychology, 120 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Peter MS, Durrant S, Jessop A, Bidgood A, Pine JM, Rowland CF. 2019. Does speed of processing or vocabulary size predict later language growth in toddlers? Cognitive Psychology, 115 :101238 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Ambridge B, Bidgood A, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Freudenthal D. 2015. Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies Cognitive science, 40 :1435-1459 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Ambridge B, Bidgood A, Twomey KE, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Freudenthal D. 2015. Preemption versus entrenchment: Towards a construction-general solution to the problem of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization PLoS ONE, 10 :e0123723 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Bidgood A, Ambridge B, Pine JM, Rowland CF. 2014. The retreat from locative overgeneralisation errors: A novel verb grammaticality judgment study PLoS One, 9 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url

Ambridge B, Pine JM, Rowland CF, Chang F, Bidgood A. 2012. The retreat from overgeneralization in child language acquisition: Word learning, morphology, and verb argument structure Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 4 :47-62 DOI Author Url Publisher Url

Chapters

Kidd E, Bidgood A, Donnelly S, Durrant S, Peter MS, Rowland CF. Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition :189-219 John Benjamins Publishing Company DOI Publisher Url

Other Professional Activity:

Reviewer, Athena Swan national review panel (Advance HE).

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