Associate Professor
Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1994
Child Language Development and Disorders; Autism

Email: rollins@utdallas.edu
Phone: 214-905-3153
Office: A 12.4

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About Pamela Rollins

Pamela Rollins, Associate Professor, is a faculty member in the Communication Disorders program within the School of Behavior and Brain Sciences at UTD/Callier Center for Communication Disorders. Pamela obtained a bachelor's degree, cum laude, in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Boston University in 1981 and a Masters of Science degree in Communication Disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. She did her clinical fellowship at Brown University's, Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital under the supervision of Dr. Barry Prizant. Pamela went on to receive an Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1994. In 1995 she was the recipient of the American Speech Language and Hearing Foundation's First Investigators award to study the relationship between early pragmatic accomplishments and vocabulary development in children with autism (Rollins, 1999). She has been appointed the Callier 2001-2002 Callier Scholar.

Pamela's research focuses on the association between early social-communicative skills, emotional regulation skills and the acquisition of vocabulary, grammar and narrative in typically developing children and children with autism. Dr. Rollins' research lends empirical support to social-pragmatic theories of language as well as social-pragmatic intervention models (Rollins, et al., 1998; Rollins & Snow, 1998; Rollins, 1999; Rollins, 2003). In the Fall of 2003, Dr. Rollins opened The Early CLASS (Early Communication Language and Social Skills). The Early Class is a classroom-based program for young children (3-5 years) on the autistic spectrum. This laboratory school offers clinical/educational services to individuals on the autistic spectrum and their families, graduate level training in speech/language pathology and Early Childhood Education. In addition, the Early CLASS both clinical and basic research questions are addressed.

Research Interests

My research focuses on the continuity between early social-pragmatic skills and the acquisition of later vocabulary, grammar and narrative. Of particular interest is the co-construction of joint attention within infant-caregiver dyads and how this process varies in children with autism and other language impairments. I employ a longitudinal research design that uses microanalyses of within-child and between-child development to systematically compare and contrast typically developing children with children who are autistic, language-impaired and deaf. This technique allows me to understand how variation in the rate of socio-pragmatic development affects the acquisition of joint attention and later linguistic skills.

Recent Publications

Rollins, P.R. (2003). Caregiver Contingent Comments and Subsequent Vocabulary Comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 221-234.

Rollins, P.R., McCabe, A., and Bliss, L. (2000). Assessment of narrative skills in children. Seminars in speech and language - Situatting Language Assesment: Influences from the past, directions for the future, 21, 223-234.

Rollins, P.R. (1999). Early pragmatic accomplishments and vocabulary development in preschool children with Autism. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology: A Journal of Clinical Practice, 8, 85-94.