Mariella Paul

About me

My name is Mariella and on this website, you can find information about me and my research.

I'm a postdoctoral researcher researcher at the University of Göttingen, within the Psychology of Language Group, led by Prof. Nivi Mani, and the Leibniz Science Campus. In my research, I investigate children's word learning in an active learning framework. In other words, I investigate how children can actively shape which words they learn, for example through their curiostiy and interests. I am also interested in how open science and meta-scientific practices can help us improve research practices in infant and EEG research.

Before coming to Göttingen, I did my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, where I worked with Prof. Claudia Männel and Prof. Angela D. Friederici. My thesis, which I defended on January 20 2022, focuses on how children acquire specific grammatical rules of language, so-called non-adjacent dependencies.

I aim to answer these research questions with a combination of methods, including EEG, online studies, and meta-scientific approaches. I strive to make my research open, transparent, and reproducible, by incorporating open science practices in my research.