Scientific Projects
The social environment and early language acquisition
Infants acquire their native language at an astonishing speed, and the social environment is possibly central for this achievement. But through which mechanisms do environmental social cues boost learning?
We are trying to uncover the minimal conditions under which such cues boost learning. Using gaze-contingent eye-tracking, we investigate whether a temporally contingent interaction partner leads to better learning, and under which conditions (for instance, where the virtual agent needs to have human-like features or not).
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 659553.
Asymmetries in early speech sound acquisition
Infants early in development are coined "universal listeners", referring to the fact that no matter what language background they areborn into, they share the same ability to discriminate speech sounds of the world. Both language-general constraints and language-specific input interact to then shape infants' developing speech sound perception. Focusing on early perceptual asymmetries with regard to consonant place of articulation, we showed that both Dutch and Japanese 4-6 month-old infants, despite growing up with a language background with very different input characteristics, showed the same asymmetry such that they were able to discriminate from labial to coronal, but not from coronal to labial place. This asymmetry was still found in Dutch, but to a lesser extent in Japanese 18-month-old toddlers. (--> Watch accompanying dance)
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Meta-analysis in language acquisition research
Meta-analyses are a tool to quantitatively summarize the results of multiple studies, allowing estimations of true effect sizes and the influence of moderator variables. In addition to conducting multiple meta-analyses on language acquisition research, we have proposed a framework for open-source, dynamic online database for meta-analyses. Based on this database, we have also well as critically assessed the replicability in the field of infant language acquisition. (--> Watch accompanying talk)Literature:
Tsuji, Bergmann, & Cristia (2014)
Bergmann, Tsuji, Piccinini, Lewis, Braginsky, Frank, & Cristia (2017)