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Research interests
- Language acquisition
- Influence of input on learning
- Acquiring categories of words and sounds
- Evolution of language
Teaching
In 2011/12, I will be teaching Taal- en spraakvermogen (Psycholinguistics) to second year students. In this course we focus on the language ability of normal adults: what cognitive processes are engaged in the production and comprehension of words, sentences, discourse? We discuss the mono- and multilingual lexicon, the neurological basis of language, models of language processing and the connection between language and thought.
Current research
Category learning across linguistic and object representation domains (PhD project, 2010-2014).
This study is part of the research project 'Models and tests of early category formation: interactions between cognitive, emotional and neural mechanisms' (see link below) within the university priority program Brain and Cognition. My project focuses on the difference between learning categories in the linguistic domain and in the object-perception domain within the first year of life.
Together with Dorothy Mandell, Paola Escudero and Maartje Raijmakers, I investigated multimodal learning in infants. When learning object-side associations, do 8- to 11-month-old infants benefit from getting both visual and auditory information, or is it easier when there is just one source for learning to categorize objects?
The second experiment is on the mechanism behind learning categories from visual and auditory information. Do infants use statistical mechanisms to learn sounds as proposed in Maye et al. (2002)? If there is indeed a 'distributional learning mechanism' behind learning sound categories, does it play a role in learning from both auditory (formants) and visual sound information (mouth shapes)?
Models and tests of early category formation
Hoe Leren Baby's-website
Babylab Amsterdam op Facebook
Contact
Although I am a member of the Capaciteitsgroep Taalwetenschap (Linguistics), I also work at the Roeterseilandcomplex (building D, souterrain) with the other Brain & Cognition researchers, usually on Thursdays. The address is Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-131. My room number there is DS-19. There is no phone installed, but I reply to emails fairly quickly. When I'm at the Bungehuis, you can reach me at 020-5253811. My pidgeon hole is at the Bungehuis (4th floor).
Page last updated: May 1, 2012