ONGOING RESEARCH
Individual Differences in Language Skills
Some people read a lot, give oral presentations, or write blog posts, whereas others spend more time working with their hands or creating visual arts. Yet studies of language often treat all native speakers as having the same language abilities. In my work, I am designing 32 tests of linguistic and cognitive skills for English native speakers, to investigate the relationship between cognitive abilities like working memory, processing speed, lifestyle factors like reading experience, and core language skills (producing and comprehending at the word and multiword level). I also manage and collaborate on several research projects with comparable Dutch and German data, which set the foundation for the development of English assessments and provide cross-linguistic perspectives.
Language, Cognition & Healthy Aging
Across the lifespan, our cognitive skills change. Some of these (like working memory and speed of processing) decline throughout adulthood, while others (like vocabulary size) increase well into advanced age. I investigate the linguistic and cognitive skills of adults aged 55 and older to see how the relationship between non-linguistic skills support language skills later in life. I’m interested in describing the ways that language ability changes with age as people gather increased linguistic experience and develop more entrenched distributional knowledge. I look at whether this increased experience supports language ability in the face of changes elsewhere in the cognitive system.
Together with collaborators from biology and genetics, I develop language tests that can be used to assess linguistic ability at the large sample size required for genetic analysis (e.g. 40,000-80,000 participants). My role is in the development and selection of robust tests that allow my colleagues to conduct analyses on the relationship between genetic variation and direct performance on linguistic indicators. Testing at this scale can only happen online, so I conduct research on establishing individual differences through testing online and make recommendations about scaling test scoring and analysis of speech data.
Genetic Basis of Language Ability
RESEARCH CLUSTER
At the MPI, I chair the research cluster “Individual Differences in Language Skills”, which brings together researchers from the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the MPI working on topics of individual differences from the perspectives of psychology, neurobiology, and genetics.
We meet monthly to discuss ongoing projects related to the behavioral, neurobiological (EEG, fMRI, structural MRI), and genetic analyses of individual differences in language skills in healthy adults.