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Dr Glynis Laws

Senior Research Fellow

telephone: +44 (0)117 92 88448 email: Glynis.Laws@bris.ac.uk

Room 1D19

Biographical details



I completed a Psychology degree at the University of Surrey, as a mature student. I stayed on to complete a PhD on the relationship between colour categorisation and colour language, supervised by Ian Davies. Following a post-doctoral post in Portsmouth, studying the efficacy of memory training for children with Down syndrome, I returned to Surrey in 1996 to a Lectureship. I moved to full time research at the University of Oxford in 2000, working with the Oxford Study of Children’s Communication Impairments, directed by Dorothy Bishop. I came to Bristol in March 2006, after transferring a project grant awarded by the Wellcome Trust. The project will run for three years and will study language and literacy development in children with Down syndrome, children with specific language impairment and children with reading difficulties.


Research interests



Language and cognitive development, particularly of children with developmental disorders


Research Grants



2006-2009 Reading and comprehension in children with Down syndrome and children with specific language impairment. The Wellcome Trust awarded to Laws, Briscoe and Jarrold. £310k

2000-2001 Phonological memory as a predictor of language development in Down syndrome. ESRC awarded to Laws. £12k


PhD Students



Christine Daoutis (Surrey, 1997-2001)

Margriet Groen (Oxford 2003- )


Some Recent Publications

Brock, J., Jarrold, C., Farran, E.K., Laws, G., & Riby, D. (2007). Do children with Williams syndrome have really good vocabulary knowledge? Methods for comparing cognitive and linguistic abilities in developmental disorders. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 21 (9), 673-688.

Groen, M. A., Yasin, I., Laws, G., Barry, J. G., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2008) Inconsistency in hand preference in children with Down syndrome is associated with deficits in receptive vocabulary. Cognitive Psychobiology, 50 (3), 242-250.

Laws, G. (2002). Working memory in children and adolescents with Down syndrome: evidence from a colour memory experiment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 353-364.

Laws, G. & Gunn, D. (2002). Relationships between reading, phonological skills and language development in individuals with Down syndrome: a five year follow up study. Reading and Writing, 15, 127-548.

Laws. G. & Bishop, D.V.M. (2003). A comparison of language abilities in adolescents with Down Syndrome and children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 46, 1324-1339.

Laws, G. & Gunn, D. (2004). Phonological memory as a predictor of language development in children with Down syndrome: a five year follow up study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 326-337.

Laws, G. & Bishop, D.V.M. (2004). Pragmatic language impairments and social deficits in Williams syndrome: A comparison with Down syndrome and specific language impairment. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 39, 45-64.

Laws, G. (2004). Contributions of phonological memory, language comprehension and hearing to the expressive language of adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 326-337.

Laws, G. & Bishop, D.V.M. (2004). Verbal deficits in Specific Language Impairment and Down syndrome: a comparative review. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 39, 423-451.

Groen, M., Laws, G., Nation, K., and Bishop, D.V.M. (2006). A case of exceptional reading accuracy in a child with Down syndrome – Underlying skills and the relation to reading comprehension. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 1190-1214.

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