Projects

Members:

Candice Frances (Cluster leader-Postdoctoral researcher)
Antje Meyer
Constantijn van der Burght (Postdoctoral researcher)
Caitlin Decuyper (PhD student)
Cecilia Husta (PhD student)
Christina Papoutsi (PhD student)
Franziska Schulz (PhD student)
Morgane Peirolo (PhD student)
Yuxi Zhou (PhD student)

Group description:

Although we use language every day, there are many unanswered questions about how we achieve this feat. Our diverse team of researchers investigates a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from the temporal dynamics of prosody planning to the intricacies of lexical access and word selection. Through a combination of methodologies such as EEG analysis, experimental studies on speech production in background noise, and investigations into the impact of pitch accents on verbal memory and a combination of methods (EEG, eye-tracking, and behavioral), we strive to unravel the complexities of language processing in various contexts. Our area of study lies at the intersection of language production, comprehension, and cognitive mechanisms, aiming to deepen our understanding of how humans perceive, produce, and comprehend language.

Collaborators:

Stavroula Alexandropoulou
Eva Belke
Angela de Bruin
Marc Brysbaert
Kate Cockroft
Matthew Crocker
Francesca Delogu
Clara Ekerdt
Stefan Frank
Lauren Hadley
Gesa Hartwigsen
Judith Holler
Iva Ivanova
Clara Martin
Vitoria Piai
Greg Scontras
Elli Tourtouri
Emiliano Zaccarella
 

The Cultural Brain research group, led by Falk Huettig, investigates how cultural inventions – such as written words, numbers, music, and belief systems – shape our mind and brain from the day we are born.

Our research is divided into three themes (the Literate Brain, the Predictive Brain, and the Multimodal Brain), each of which provides us with a unique window for exploring the culturally-shaped mind.

We use behavioural measures, functional and structural neuroimaging techniques, and computational modelling to help us answer the central question: To what extent does culture determine what it means to think as a human?

For more information about our research team and current projects, visit the Cultural Brain research group page.

This research cluster investigates why people differ in how they speak, listen, and read, and how this variation reflects differences in linguistic knowledge (e.g., vocabulary, reading experience) and general cognitive skills (e.g., processing speed, working memory, non-verbal reasoning). By integrating behavioral assessments with genetic and neurobiological measures, we aim to uncover how cognitive, linguistic, and neural factors jointly shape language competency and use.

Our research largely revolves around the Individual Differences in Language Skills (IDLaS) test batteries, comprehensive sets of behavioral tasks designed to measure linguistic knowledge, cognitive abilities, and language-processing skills in Dutch, German and English. The Dutch version (IDLaS-NL) has been tested on over 1,200 native Dutch speakers between the ages of 18 and 85. Factor scores derived from the Dutch battery have also been linked to genetic and neurobiological variance in ongoing research. The German test battery (IDLaS-DE) has been validated on 180 native German speakers (18-30 years old). The English (IDLaS-EN) test battery is in pilot testing, with large-scale data collection expected soon.

To support broader research, we provide a customizable web platform that allows researchers to select and administer any combination of our assessments and receive results in CSV format; Dutch and German versions are currently available at https://www.mpi.nl/idlas.

Members and collaborators

Sandra Bethke
Else Eising
Simon Fisher 
Stephanie Forkel 
Peter Hagoort
Florian Hintz 
Birgit Knudsen 
Kyla McConnell (chair)
James McQueen 
Antje Meyer  
Müge Özker Sertel
Stan van der Burght
 

When we speak, we produce variations in the intonation, rhythm, and loudness of our voice. These characteristics of speech (together called: prosody) play an important role during everyday communication. Prosody can highlight new or particularly relevant information in a sentence, it can influence the processing of grammatical structure, and it can communicate the speaker’s intention or emotional state. Listeners rapidly implement prosodic information into a sentence representation and speakers use prosody effortlessly to convey their intended meaning. Yet, fundamental questions surrounding prosody processing remain.

The researchers in this group aim to find answers to questions such as: How do conversation partners use and interpret prosody to convey what are particularly relevant parts of their message? How do speakers plan the proosidc characteristics of their sentence together with the specific words they produce? And how do speakers and listeners vary in prosody processing, both in the way they perceive prosodic cues and in the way they produce them? To answer these questions, behavioural and neuroimaging methods are used, in addition to the phonetic and phonological analysis of speech recordings.

Members and collaborators

Candice Frances
Antje Meyer
Morgane Peirolo 
Stan van der Burght (chair)
Yuxi Zhou
Ruth Corps (University of Sheffield)
Elli Tourtouri (University of Osnabrück)
Joanne Chan (University of Groningen)
Helin Erdem (University of Amsterdam)
Giulia Li Calzi (University of Trento)

Test battery

Hintz et al. (in preparation). IDLaS-NL – A platform for running customized studies on individual differences in language skills via the internet.

Materials

Decuyper et al. (in preparation). Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS): Dutch names for 1300 photographs.

Duñabeitia, J. A., Crepaldi, D., Meyer, A. S., New, B., Pliatsikas, C., Smolka, E., & Brysbaert, M. (2018). MultiPic: A standardized set of 750 drawings with norms for six European languages. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(4), 808-816. doi:10.1080/17470218.2017.1310261.

De Groot, F., Koelewijn, T., Huettig, F., & Olivers, C. N. L. (2016). A stimulus set of words and pictures matched for visual and semantic similarity. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 28(1), 1-15. doi:10.1080/20445911.2015.1101119.

Shao, Z., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Predicting naming latencies for action pictures: Dutch norms. Behavior Research Methods, 46, 274-283. doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0358-6.

Shao, Z., & Stiegert, J. (2016). Predictors of photo naming: Dutch norms for 327 photos. Behavior Research Methods, 48(2), 577-584. doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0613-0.

Methods

Bosker, H. R. (2021). Using fuzzy string matching for automated assessment of listener transcripts in speech intelligibility studies. Behavior Research Methods, 53(5), 1945-1953. doi:10.3758/s13428-021-01542-4.

Corcoran, A. W., Alday, P. M., Schlesewsky, M., & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. (2018). Toward a reliable, automated method of individual alpha frequency (IAF) quantification. Psychophysiology, 55(7): e13064. doi:10.1111/psyp.13064.

Rodd, J., Bosker, H. R., Ten Bosch, L., & Ernestus, M. (2019). Deriving the onset and offset times of planning units from acoustic and articulatory measurements. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(2), EL161-EL167. doi:10.1121/1.5089456.

Schillingmann, L., Ernst, J., Keite, V., Wrede, B., Meyer, A. S., & Belke, E. (2018). AlignTool: The automatic temporal alignment of spoken utterances in German, Dutch, and British English for psycholinguistic purposes. Behavior Research Methods, 50(2), 466-489. doi:10.3758/s13428-017-1002-7.

Shao, Z., Janse, E., Visser, K., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). What do verbal fluency tasks measure? Predictors of verbal fluency performance in older adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 772. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00772.

Shao, Z., & Meyer, A. S. (2018). Word priming and interference paradigms. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 111-129). Hoboken: Wiley.

Veenstra, A., Acheson, D. J., & Meyer, A. S. (2014). Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets. Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 783. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00783.

The Juggling Act Cluster: Speaking and Listening in Conversation

The Juggling Act Cluster has ended with Dr. Ruth Corps moving to The University of Sheffield.

The Representation and Computation of Structure (RepCom) group

The RepCom Cluster has ended with the initiation of the Max Planck Independent Research Group "Language and Computation in Neural Systems"
 

The TEMPoral Organisation of Speech (TEMPOS) group

The TEMPOS Cluster ended in 2022 with Dr. Hans Rutger Bosker moving to Radboud University, where he leads his Speech Perception in Audiovisual Communication (SPEAC) group.