Orcid ID: click here
Patent:
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2022). System zur Früherkennung von Sprachentwicklungsstörung und Verfahren zum Erfassen von Daten zur Präferenz eines Hörerlebnisses bei Säuglingen und Kleinkindern (10 2020 124 842). Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt. https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/pat/register?AKZ=1020201248423
International peer-reviewed publications:
2025
Omane, P. O., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T. (2025). Tongue root harmony cues for speech segmentation in multilingually raised infants learning languages with and without vowel harmony in Ghana (Africa). Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728925100485 Preprint on PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/e89gb
Garcia, R., Valdez, M. C., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Infants discriminate subtle nasal contrasts late: Evidence from field psycholinguistic experiments on Tagalog-learning infants in the Philippines. Developmental Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/dev0002053. Preprint on PsyArXiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6rp75\_v1
Hamburger, L., Schlangen, D., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). The role of social cues in infants’ word segmentation when interacting with a Furhat Robot. Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL 2025), Prague, on IEEE Xplore. Accepted for publication.
Colombani, A., Varghese, P., Yin Mai, Q., Saksida, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Tuomainen, O. & Sharma, M. (2025). Cross-situational learning of sign-like gestures in children and adults: a behavioural and event-related potential study. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2025.2539136
Kaland, C., Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Nazzi, T. (2025). Prosodic grouping in Papuan Malay, Akan and German. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 158 (1), 776-789. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0037212 Preprint on PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/3y2wr.
Engbert, R., Funken, J., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Towards dynamical modeling of infants’ looking times. WIREs Cognitive Science. doi: 10.1002/wcs.70006.
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N., van Ommen, S., & Schmandt, S. (2025). Phonological biases in lexical access in French and German: data from a familiar word-recognition conflict task. Infant Behavior and Development, 79, 102070. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102070
Vanoncini, M., Kayhan, E., Elsner, B., Wunderwald, M., Wallot, S., Hoehl, S., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Individual differences in infants’ speech segmentation performance: The role of mother-infant cardiac synchrony. Infancy, 30(2), e70020. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.70020
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Exploring the nature of multilingual input to infants in multiple caregiver families in an African city: The case of Accra (Ghana). Cognitive Development, 74, 101558. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101558 Preprint on PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/4uxj6
Hullebus, M. A., Gafos, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Langus, A., & Höhle, B. (2025). Infant preference for specific phonetic cue relations in the contrast between voiced and voiceless stops. Infancy, 30 (1), e12630. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12630
2024
Kotera, H., Kattab, G., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Höhle, B. (2024). German infants' discrimination of the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast: Evidence from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study. Infant Behavior and Development, 77, 101984. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.101984
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2024). Vowel harmony preferences in infants growing up in multilingual Ghana (Africa). Developmental Psychology, 60(8), 1372-1383. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001776
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Shandala, A., & Langus, L. (2024). Infants show systematic rhythmic motor responses while listening to rhythmic speech. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1370007
Kaland, C., Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Nazzi, T. (2024). Prosodic grouping in Akan and the applicability of the iambic-trochaic law. Proc. Speech Prosody 2024, 1040-1044. doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-210
Piot, L., Nazzi, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2024). Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic regularities related to perceptually low-salient fricatives: a cross-linguistic study. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1367240
Vanoncini, M., , Elsner, B., Höhl, S. , Boll-Avetisyan, N.* & Kayhan, E.* (2024). Mother-Infant Social Gaze Dynamics relate to Infant Brain Activity and Word Segmentation. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 65, 101331. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101331 OSF: 10.31234/osf.io/ut6bq *Shared last authorship.
Aravena-Bravo, P., Cristia, A., Garcia, R., Kotera, H., Kunene Nicolas, R., Laranjo, R., Arokoyo, B., Benavides, S., Benders, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Cychosz, M., Dal Ben, R., Diop, Y., Durán-Urzúa, C., Havron, N., Manalili, M., Narasimhan, B., Omane, P., Rowland, C., Kolberg, L., Ssemata, A., Styles, S., Troncoso-Acosta, B., & Woon, F. (2024). Towards diversifying early language development research: First Truly Global International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/) 2021. Journal of Cognition and Development, 25 (2), 242-260. DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2023.2231083 (Green open access, see Psyarxiv)
2023
Langus, A.,* Boll-Avetisyan, N.,* van Ommen, S., & Nazzi, T. (2023). Music and language in the crib: Early cross-domain effects of experience on categorical perception of prominence in spoken language. Developmental Science, e13383, 1-12. doi: 10.1111/desc.13383 *Shared first authorship. (Open access)
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., Duah, R. & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2023). Diversifying language acquisition research can be (partly) achieved in urban societies and with simplified methodologies: insights from multilingual Ghana. Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 532-536. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000923000090
Boll-Avetisyan, N., van Ommen, S., Höhle, B. & Nazzi, T. (2023). Categorical perception of lexical stress. Preprint on PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/cjvmu
2022
Vanoncini, M., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Elsner, B., Höhl, S. & Kayhan, E. (2022). The role of mother-infant emotional synchrony in speech processing in 9-month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 69, 101772. [pre-print]
2021
Sahling, M., Benders, T., Männel, C., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2021). Building a phoneme inventory through blocked ears: the effects of prior otitis media with effusion on children‘s phoneme discrimination. Journal of Child Language. Stage 1 preregistered report accepted for publication.
Tsui, A. S. M., Carstensen, A., Kachergis, G., Abubakar, A., Asnake, M., Barry, O., Basnight-Brown, D., Bentu, D., Bergmann, C., Binan Dami, E., Boll-Avetisyan, N., de Jongh, M., Diop, Y., Herrmann, E., Jang, C., Kizito, S., Lamba, T., Maliwichi-Senganimalunje, L., Marangu, J., Mathur, M., Mbagaya, C. V., Mekonnen Mengistie, D., Milton, C., Mushimiyimana, F., Ndhambi, M., Ngina, I., Njoroge, E., Odhiambo Oburu, P., Omane, P., Singh, A., Ssemata, A. S., Unyuzumutima, J., Zeidler, H., Lew-Williams, C., Frank, M. C. (2021). Exploring variation in infants’ preference for infant-directed speech: Evidence from a multi-site study in Africa. Developmental Science. Stage 1 preregistered report accepted for publication. Doi: https://osf.io/fqp4b
Gasparini, L., Langus, A., Tsuji, S. & Boll-Avetisyan, N., (2021). Quantifying the role of rhythm in infants’ language discrimination abilities: A meta-analysis. Cognition. 104757. Online before print. Doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104757 This project on OSF: https://osf.io/396yb/ [click here for the preprint]
Höhle, B., Fritzsche, T., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Hullebus, M., & Gafos, A. (2021). Respect the surroundings: effects of phonetic context variability on infants' learning of minimal pairs. JASA Express Letters, 2(1), 024401. DOI: 10.1121/10.0003574
2020
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Bhatara, A., & Höhle, B. (2020). Processing of rhythm in speech and music in adult dyslexia. Brain Sciences, 10(5), 261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10050261 [click for open access]
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Bhatara, A., Unger, A., Nazzi, T. & Höhle, B. (2020). Rhythmic grouping biases in simultaneous bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(5), 1070-1081 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000140 [click for open access]
van Ommen, S., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Larraza, S., Wellmann, C., Bijeljac-Babic, R., Höhle, B. & Nazzi, T. (2020). Language-specific prosodic acquisition: a comparison of phrase boundary perception by French- and German-learning infants. Journal of Memory and Language. Volume 112, June 2020, 104108 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Omane, P. O., & Kügler, F. (2020). Speech rhythm in Ghanaian languages: The cases of Akan, Ewe and Ghanaian English. Proc. Speech Prosody 2020, 586-590, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-120 . [preprint version] [link to the video talk presented at virtual Speech Prosody]
2019
Junge, C., Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Benders, T. (2019). Speech perception and discrimination: from sounds to words. In: J. Horst & J. von Koss Torkildsen (Eds): International Handbook of Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge.
2018
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Nixon, J., Lentz, T., Liu, L., Ommen, S. van, Çöltekin, Ç., & Rij, J. van (2018). Neural response development during distributional learning. Proceedings of Interspeech 2018, Iderabad, India, September, 2-6, 2018, p. 1432-1436. Doi :10.21437/Interspeech.2018 [link][pdf]
Nixon, J.S., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Lentz, T.O., van Ommen, S., Keij, B., Çöltekin, Ç., Liu, L. & van Rij, J. (2018). Short-term exposure enhances perception of both between- and within-category acoustic information. Proc. 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018, 114-118. Doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-23. [open access version] [pre-print version]
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2018). The role of phonological structure in speech segmentation by infants and adults: a review and methodological considerations. In: Empirical Approaches to the Phonological Structure of Words. Eds: Christiane Ulbrich,Alexander Werth, & Richard Wiese. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, Linguistische Arbeiten Series, Vol. 567. [pre-print version]
Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Höhle, B., & Nazzi, T. (2018). Early sensitivity and acquisition of prosodic patterns at the lexical level. In: Esteve-Gibert, N., and Prieto, P. (Eds.): The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition. John Benjamins, Trends in Language Acquisition Research, Vol. 23. [pdf]
2017
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Bhatara, A. & Höhle, B. (2017). Effects of musicality on the perception of rhythmic structure in speech. Laboratory Phonology, 8(1), 9. doi: http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.91[link, open access]
2016
Boll-Avetisyan, N., Bhatara, A., Unger, A., Nazzi, T. & Höhle, B. (2016). Effects of experience with L2 and music on rhythmic grouping by French listeners. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(5), 971-986. doi: 10.1017/S1366728915000425 [link] [pre-print version]
Boll-Avetisyan, N., & Kager, R. (2016). Is speech processing influenced by abstract or detailed phonotactic representations? The case of the Obligatory Contour Principle. Lingua, 171, 74-91. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2015.11.008 [pre-print version]
Abboub, N., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Bhatara, A., Höhle, B. & Nazzi, T. (2016). An exploration of rhythmic grouping of speech sequences by French- and German-learning infants. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10:292. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00292 [pdf] [link, open access]
Bhatara, A., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Agus, T., Höhle, B. & Nazzi, T. (2016). Language experience affects grouping of musical instrument sounds. Cognitive Science, 40(7), 1816–1830. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12300 [link]
Bhatara, A., Laukka, P., Boll-Avetisyan, N., Ganion, L., Anger Helfenbein, H., & Bänzinger, T. (2016). Second language ability and emotional prosody perception. PLoS ONE,11(6), e0156855.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0156855 [link, open access]
2014 and earlier
Boll-Avetisyan, N. & Kager, R. (2014): OCP-Place in speech segmentation. Language and Speech, 57(3), 394-421. doi: 10.1177/0023830913508074 [pre-print version] [link]
Bhatara, A.,Boll-Avetisyan, N., Unger, A., Nazzi, T. & Höhle, B. (2013): Native language affects rhythmic grouping of speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(5), 3828-3843. doi: 10.1121/1.4823848 [pre-print version] [link]
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2012): Probabilistic phonotactics in lexical acquisition: The role of syllable complexity. In Hoole, P., Bombien, L., Pouplier, M., Mooshammer, C., & Kühnert, B. (Eds): Consonant clusters and structural complexity. Mouton de Gruyter, Interface Explorations Series. (peer reviewed) [pdf]
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2011). Second language probabilistic phonotactics and structural knowledge in short-term memory recognition. In N. Danis, K. Mesh & H. Sung (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 1, pp. 60-72). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [pdf]
Dissertation
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2012): Phonotactics and its Acquisition, Representation, and Use: An Experimental-Phonological Study. Doctoral dissertation. Utrecht: LOT Publications. LOT Dissertation series 298.
Published reviews by:
Kevin Mendousse (University of Auckland), LINGUIST List, September 1, 2013, see http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4504.html
Ulbrich, Christiane (2014): Rezension zu: Phonotactics and its Acquisition, Representation, and Use: An Experimental-Phonological Study von Natalie Boll-Avetisyan. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 81, 2, 196-198.
Other publications
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2017): Rezension zu: Phonotaktisches Wissen: Zur prä-attentiven Verarbeitung phonotaktischer Illegalität von Johanna Steinberg. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 83(1), 124-127. (upon invitation) [pdf]
Natalie, Elise, Annemarie & René (2009). Patroonherkenning uit continue spraak (9 en 15 maanden). Babylab Nieuwsbrief 2009, Utrecht, 5-7 (3 p.).
Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2009). LabPhon 2008 Conference report. Psycholinguistics Utrecht Newsletter, 1(1), 10-11 (2 p.).
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