Emily Saunders
Postdoctoral Associate
Dr. Emily Saunders is a postdoctoral research associate in the Language Acquisition & Visual Attention (LAVA) Lab at BU Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. Her research centers on the dynamics of visual attention between deaf children and their signing caregivers, with a particular focus on early literacy activities such as shared book reading.
As a doctoral student in the San Diego State/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Language & Communicative Disorders, Dr. Saunders studied the cognitive processes of reading for deaf adults, investigating language co-activation, morphological awareness, and unique eye movement behaviors. Research from her dissertation, “Eyes on Morphology: Investigating the role of morphological processing for deaf readers,” was published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education.
Pronouns: she/her
Education
PhD, Language and Communicative Disorders, San Diego State University
BA, Linguistics (Minor: American Sign Language), University of Texas at Austin
BA, English, University of Texas at Austin
Selected Publications
Saunders, E., Helms, H., & Emmorey, K. (2025). Morphological awareness and reading skill for deaf and hearing adults. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, enaf042. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdsade/enaf042
Saunders, E., Mirault, J., & Emmorey, K. (2024). Activation of ASL signs during sentence reading for deaf readers: evidence from eye-tracking. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-9.
Saunders, E., & Quinto-Pozos, D. (2021). Comprehension benefits of visual-gestural iconicity and spatial referencing. Second Language Research, 39(2), 363-386.
Selected Presentations
Saunders, E., Schotter, E., & Emmorey, K. (2024, November). Morphological processing in the parafovea during sentence reading for deaf readers [Oral presentation]. Psychonomic Society 65th Annual Meeting, New York City, NY, United States.
Saunders, E., Stringer, C., Sinclair, G., Cooley, F., Schotter, E., and Emmorey, K. (2023, November). Predictors of word and sign superiority effects for deaf readers [Poster presentation]. Psychonomic Society 64th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Saunders, E., Mirault, J., and Emmorey, K. (2023, August). Activation of ASL signs during sentence reading for deaf readers: evidence from eye-tracking [Oral presentation]. Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP) 29, San Sebastian, Spain.
Saunders, E., Sehyr, Z., and Emmorey, K. (2021, July). Examining spelling error patterns in ASL Fingerspelling and English [Oral presentation]. Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Virtual Conference.
Saunders, E., and Quinto-Pozos, D. (2019, September). Benefits of iconicity in acquisition and comprehension of a signed second language [Poster presentation]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR) 13, Hamburg, Germany.