Neurocognition of Language

Group Members

Research interests:

Cortical mechanisms and neurophysiological correlates of language processing in infants and adults

EEG as a method to investigate healthy and impaired language processing as well as developmental changes

Project

Development of prosodic competence in early first language acquisition: Behavioral and neurophysiological investigations

Principle investigators:

Prof. Dr. Isabell Wartenburger (PhD Supervisor)

Prof. Dr. Barbara Höhle

Prof. Dr. Hubert Truckenbrodt

Aim:

The project aims at the very early prosodic development in first language acquisition with a focus of phonological and acoustic correlates of prosodic boundaries, as well as at a comparison of infant perception with the perception of these boundaries in adult German speakers.

Within this framework I will investigate the perception of intonational phrase boundaries using speech material with natural prosodic boundaries as and speech material, in which different cues for prosodic boundaries are systematically manipulated. In EEG experiments conducted with German infants of 4-and 8-months of age as well as adults, I am testing the strength and influence of the different boundary cues with an emphasis on potential developmental processing changes.