2026 Jill de Villiers: Social Sciences and Humanities Researcher – H-Index, Publications & Awards

Discipline name	D-Index	World Ranking	Current World Ranking	National Ranking	Current National Ranking	Publications	Citations
Social Sciences and Humanities	46	3574	3291	1714	1551	130	10495

Research.com Recognitions

2018 - Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Overview

Jill de Villiers is affiliated with Smith College in the United States and has contributed extensively to research in the field of psychology, with a particular focus on developmental and educational psychology.

The main topics addressed in their work include:

Language Development and Disorders
Reading and Literacy Development
Child and Animal Learning Development
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Family and Disability Support Research
Language and Cultural Evolution
Infant Development and Preterm Care

De Villiers has published across several prominent venues. Most frequent publication platforms include:

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
PsycTESTS Dataset
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Early Childhood Research Quarterly
The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific

The researcher has collaborated frequently with several coauthors, including Aquiles Iglesias, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Dani Levine, and Mary Sweig Wilson.

Among recent published papers are:

"Across demographics and recent history, most parents sing to their infants and toddlers daily," 2021, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
"Home literacy environment and existing knowledge mediate the link between socioeconomic status and language learning skills in dual language learners," 2020, Early Childhood Research Quarterly
"Prevalence, co-occurring difficulties, and risk factors of developmental language disorder: first evidence for Mandarin-speaking children in a population-based study," 2023, The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific
"Narratives reflecting Theory of Mind among bilingual Lyuli children of Uzbekistan," 2023, Journal of language and cultural education
"With Language in Mind," 2020, Language Learning and Development

The primary fields of study for this researcher are psychology and its subfields, particularly:

Developmental and Educational Psychology
Language and Linguistics
Education
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience

Jill de Villiers was recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

Best Publications

A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech

Jill G. de Villiers;Peter A. de Villiers

1158
Citations
Complements to cognition: a longitudinal study of the relationship between complex syntax and false-belief-understanding

Jill G. de Villiers;Jennie E. Pyers

919
Citations
Language and Theory of Mind: A Study of Deaf Children

Brenda Schick;Peter de Villiers;Jill de Villiers;Robert Hoffmeister

804
Citations
Linguistic determinism and the understanding of false beliefs.

Jill G. de Villiers;Peter A. de Villiers

742
Citations
The Interface of Language and Theory of Mind

Jill de Villiers

600
Citations
Language and Theory of Mind: What are the Developmental relationships?

Jill de Villiers

396
Citations
Children's comprehension of relative clauses.

Jill G. de Villiers;Helen B. Tager Flusberg;Kenji Hakuta;Michael Cohen

282
Citations
The Acquisition of English

Jill G. de Villiers;Peter A. de Villiers

278
Citations
Early judgments of semantic and syntactic acceptability by children.

Peter A. de Villiers;Jill G. de Villiers

275
Citations
The Acquisition of Long-Distance Rules

Jill De Villiers;Thomas Roeper;Anne Vainikka

249
Citations
The Role of Language in Theory of Mind Development.

Jill G. de Villiers;Peter A. de Villiers

230
Citations
Competence and performance in child language: are children really competent to judge?

Jill G. De Villiers;Peter A. De Villiers

196
Citations
Agreement without understanding? The case of third person singular /s/

Valerie E. Johnson;Jill G. de Villiers;Harry N. Seymour

176
Citations
Language Processing and Language Acquisition

Lyn Frazier;Jill G. De Villiers

172
Citations
Enhancing early child care quality and learning for toddlers at risk: The responsive early childhood program.

Susan H. Landry;Tricia A. Zucker;Heather B. Taylor;Paul R. Swank

166
Citations
Thinking While Talking Adults Fail Nonverbal False-Belief Reasoning

Ashley M. Newton;Jill G. de Villiers

164
Citations
Complementing Cognition: The Relationship between Language and Theory of Mind

Jill G. de Villiers;Jennie Pyers

146
Citations
Language for thought: Coming to understand false beliefs

Jill G. de Villiers;Peter A. de Villiers

133
Citations
Some facts one simply cannot deny

Jill G. De Villiers;Helen B. Tager Flusberg

112
Citations
Deception dissociates from false belief reasoning in deaf children: Implications for the implicit versus explicit theory of mind distinction

Peter A. de Villiers;Jill G. de Villiers

104
Citations
Intelligence in ape and man: by David Premack. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1976. xiv + 370 pp. $16.50☆

Jill G. de Villiers

11
Citations

Frequent Co-Authors

Nancy Eisenberg Arizona State University

Christopher J. Lonigan Florida State University

Susan H. Landry The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Beth M. Phillips Florida State University

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Temple University

Marcia A. Barnes Vanderbilt University

Tracy L. Spinrad Arizona State University

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff University of Delaware

Paul R. Swank The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Carlos Valiente Arizona State University

External Links

Wikipedia of Jill de Villiers Personal website of Jill de Villiers Google Scholar page

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