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), 1-6. DOI: 10.1109/ICDL63968.2025.11204451
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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