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Read our most recent news highlighted below from the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci). Delve into our news archive page or stay updated by subscribing to our quarterly newsletter DevSci Developments and receive the latest updates directly in your inbox.
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DevSci Spotlight: Post-doc fellow Brittany Manning
April 3, 2025
Like many young children, Brittany Manning was a little slower learning to talk. When Manning was in high school, she started accompanying her younger sibling, who was diagnosed as a late talker, to speech therapy visits. It was here that she discovered her fascination with speech-language pathology, the study of communication disorders. 
Now, Manning is a postdoctoral fellow at DevSci. Her current research investigates the connections between early language development and mental health challenges in children.
Manning is a member of DevSci’s “Mental Health, Earlier” training program, a National Institute of Mental Health-funded research fellowship focused on interdisciplinary childhood neurodevelopment and psychopathology. Neurodevelopment describes how the brain matures throughout childhood and beyond, and psychopathology is the study of mental health illnesses.
“Mental Health, Earlier” postdocs study mental health challenges and resilience in children and young adults. Their work aims to inspire early intervention strategies for kids with development challenges to prevent mental health issues down the line.
“It just has been an amazing resource for me in particular because my research is so interdisciplinary,” Manning said about the program.
Before her professional research journey, Manning obtained undergraduate and masters degrees in communicative disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in Chicago, interacting with children that had challenges understanding or using language.
She noticed that children with language difficulties also often had co-occurring mental health or neurological challenges, such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder or anxiety.
“At the time, most of the research in my field was really focused on specific language weaknesses. We even had a word for it. It was called specific language impairment, which implied that there were a lot of kids that had isolated language weaknesses,” Manning said. “But in clinical practice, we knew that this really wasn't the case.”
Manning eventually left clinical practice to pursue a Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders and speech-language pathology at Northwestern, where she worked under Dr. Elizabeth Norton, co-director of the Neurodevelopmental Research & Assessment Core at DevSci.
Manning’s dissertation focused on a developmental skill called joint engagement and its effects on language development. Joint engagement describes how children and caregivers intentionally interact with an object or activity together, like playing with a toy.
Manning measured brain electrical activity in children who were late talkers and those with normal language development during joint engagement sessions with their parents. She found that both groups showed similar neural activity. This meant that joint engagement could be a potential way to introduce language development exercises for late talkers.
Combining her neuroscience work in her Ph.D. and clinical experience, Manning sought to further investigate ways to advance speech-language pathology and support kids with co-occurring challenges.
“A lot of children I worked with in clinical practice didn't just have diagnoses in the domain of language. They had associated diagnoses in the mental health domain, social challenges, behavioral challenges, and so that's something I really wanted to dig deeply into in my postdoc.” Manning said.
In her postdoc, Manning is currently working with DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag on identifying risk factors of mental health challenges in young children, like co-occurring late talking and temper tantrums, in speech-language pathology settings. Manning hopes to then teach evidence-based mental health techniques to SLPs to help improve the success of speech therapy sessions.
As a “Mental Health, Earlier” fellow and DevSci trainee, Manning said that interacting with a variety of DevSci experts, such as clinical psychology researchers, social workers and child mental health specialists, through research talks and symposiums at DevSci has supported her interdisciplinary interests.
“This has really helped me become a better researcher. I learn about new methods across these different fields,” Manning said. Alongside her postdoctoral fellowship, Manning has also applied for a career development grant to support her goals of becoming an independent researcher.
Manning said she is grateful for DevSci’s collective work.
“We each are trained in our own fields, and we have the desire to help children support their development so that they have more successful outcomes later in life,” Manning said.
October 10th, 2024
First-of-its-kind center targeting mental health prevention in early childhood in routine pediatric care. Northwestern University has launched a new Mental Health, Earlier Center at the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), thanks to an $11.7 million award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health.
Read the full article here.
Dr. Laurie Wakschlag, DevSci Director, Receives Paula H. Stern Award
February 28, 2024
DevSci leaders are delighted to share that DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag has been honored with this year’s Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine.
This honor is given by the Feinberg School of Medicine Women Faculty Organization to "an FSM woman faculty member who has spent a significant portion of her career at Northwestern, has exhibited successful basic, translational, or clinical research, strong leadership at a local, national or international level in her field, and who has an exemplary track record of inspiring and mentoring trainees and/or young investigators."
In addition to serving as the Founding Director of the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), Lauren ("Laurie") S. Wakschlag, PhD is the Professor and Vice Chair for Scientific and Faculty Development in the Department of Medical Social Sciences (Division of Determinants of Health), and Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, and Human Development and Social Policy.
Read full story at Feinberg News
November 13, 2023 – from Breakthroughs