Jenny Saffran is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on the kinds of learning abilities required to master the complexities of language. Three broad issues characterize her work. One line of research asks what kinds of learning emerge in infancy. A second line of research probes the biases that shape human learning abilities, and the relationship between these biases and the structure of human languages. A third issue concerns the extent to which the learning abilities underlying this process are specifically tailored for language acquisition. Related research concerns infant music perception, and the relationship between music and language learning. Saffran received a BA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of Rochester. She is married to fellow UW psychologist Seth Pollak.
