Welcome to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
BBC2 features 'Babies: Their Wonderful World'
Nov 18, 2018
Researchers of the ESRC LuCiD Centre will be featuring in a 3-part documentary on BBC2 called 'Babies: Their Wonderful World'. The first episode airs on BBC2 on Monday 26th November at 9pm.
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IMPRS students publish winning article on NEMO Kennislink
Nov 14, 2018
For the annual writing course ‘Current Issues in the Language Sciences’ graduate students of the IMPRS for Language Sciences are judged on an article written for the general audience. The winning article of this year’s competition - written by Cohort 2017 members Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, Merel Postema and Katja Stärk - got recently published on the Dutch popular scientific website NEMO Kennislink.
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Not biology, but culture shapes how we talk about the senses
Nov 08, 2018
It has long been assumed that there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, with vision and hearing pitted against ‘lower’ senses like touch, taste and smell. But does this Western idea hold for all languages and cultures? In a pioneering study, Nijmegen language scientists show that it is not biology, but culture that predicts the relative importance of the senses.
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A newly identified disorder of human brain development, with macrocephaly and impaired speech and language
Nov 06, 2018
Some genes are especially important for regulating the development of the human brain. When a child carries a mutation disrupting one of those genes, this can lead to problems with aspects of cognitive development, including speech and language impairments. In a study published in Nature Communications, an international team of researchers and clinicians, led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute’s Language & Genetics Department, identify a new disorder of human brain development, caused by rare mutations in a gene named CHD3, and show that the mutations interfere with the way that this gene works.
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Variation in vocabulary – The learning, knowledge, and processing of words
Oct 09, 2018
The native speakers of a language differ in how many words they know. But what are the effects of variation in vocabulary size on language processing? And why do people differ in their vocabulary size? Nina Mainz’s thesis examined these two questions. Mainz will defend her thesis on October 22nd at 12:30 at the Aula of the Radboud University Nijmegen.
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World-renowned philosopher Professor Daniel C. Dennett will deliver the Nijmegen Lectures on October 15 and 16, 2018
Oct 08, 2018
Daniel Dennett is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in the United States. Dennett will be in Nijmegen to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Radboud University on Thursday October 18, 2018. We are happy that world-renowned philosopher Professor Daniel C. Dennett has accepted to deliver the Nijmegen Lectures about Autonomy, Language, and Consciousness.
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Genes, Memes and Tremes. The Future of Artificial Intelligence | Lecture by psychologist Susan Blackmore
Oct 05, 2018
In an exciting event jointly sponsored by Radboud Reflects and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Susan Blackmore will visit Nijmegen on October 29th to talk about the evolution of technology and the emergence of new forms of intelligence.
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Ten Lectures on Language, Cognition, and Language Acquisition
Sep 26, 2018
Melissa Bowerman presented these ten lectures in 2010. Her sudden death in 2011 prevented her from turning them into a book-size publication, as was her intention. Her close colleagues and dear friends Eve Clark and Dan Slobin then took it upon them to edit these lectures for publication - a challenging and delicate exercise. The resulting book is not only a lasting tribute to professor Bowerman as the leading developmental psycholinguist she was, but also the best, up-to-date introduction to the full breadth of her research.
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