Abstract: 

Very early on, young children develop abilities that allow them to perceive and understand features of their native language. Indeed, children gradually develop perceptual and productive abilities that help them becoming specialists of their native language. However, the processes at play during language acquisition are of auditory nature and a hearing loss can lead to difficulties in accessing oral information and developing oral language. For children with cochlear implants, receptive and productive abilities improve with prolonged use, yet the signal transmitted through the devices remains partial and delays and difficulties remain when compared to their peers with typical hearing. The children using cochlear implants are also showing great variability in their fluency and language abilities.

In my recent work, I have been interested in the interactions at several levels of linguistic processing in German-speaking children with cochlear implants, aged 5-11 years, namely their processing of lexical and morphological information. These areas have been shown to be difficult for children with cochlear implants, but the segmental characteristics of the linguistic material haven’t been given much attention in the understanding of their contribution to these difficulties. In this talk, I will present the results of studies using combined eye-tracking and behavioral paradigms: I am especially interested in exploring how the segmental characteristics of words and inflection (i.e., plural marking of nouns) influence their processing.

Short bio:

My research focuses on processes at play in the course of typical language acquisition and language acquisition with Hearing Loss, both in production and reception. I am mainly interested in how different levels of linguistic processing abilities interact, especially in children with Hearing Loss. I completed my PhD in Linguistics at the Université Grenoble Alpes (France), then hold a temporary teaching position at the Université de Tours (France) and did a post-doc at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (Germany). Since September 2023, I have been working at Nantes Université (France) as an Associate Professor in Linguistics, language acquisition and didactics.

About the ACLC seminar series

The ACLC seminar series is a lecture series organized by the ACLC, the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication.