Nadja Althaus
Lecturer
School of Psychology, University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK
My research investigates language processing and development, using eye tracking and computational models (neural networks & SOMs).
I am interested in phonology and speech processing, as well as the interface between language and object knowledge in word learning.
Current Projects
At the Developmental Dynamics Lab (UEA): Interacting roles of phonological and visual similarity in infant word learning - funded by the British Academy.
As Visiting Researcher at the Language & Brain Lab, University of Oxford: MORPHON project on morphophonological alternations (PI: Aditi Lahiri)
With Gilbert Ambrazaitis (Linnæus-University Växjö, Sweden), Susan Sayehli (University of Stockholm, Sweden) and Anna Sara Hexeberg Romøren (OsloMet, Norway): BlikSSt Project about the acquisition of focus prosody in two dialects of Swedish.
Selected publications
Phonology / Psycholinguistics
Althaus, N., Kotzor, S., Schuster, S. & Lahiri, A. (2022). Distinct orthography boosts morphophonological discrimination: Vowel raising in Bengali verb inflections. Cognition, 222, 104963. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104963
Althaus, N., Wetterlin, A., & Lahiri, A. (2021). Features of low functional load in mono- and bilinguals’ lexical access: evidence from Swedish tonal accent. Phonetica. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/phon-2021-2002/html
Computational Models of Cognitive Development
Althaus, N., Gliozzi, V., Mayor, J., & Plunkett, K. (2020). Infant categorization as a dynamic process linked to memory. Royal Society Open Science, 7(10). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200328
Althaus, N., & Mareschal, D. (2013). Modeling Cross-Modal interactions in early word learning. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 5(4), 288–297. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAMD.2013.2264858
Cognitive Development
Sučević, J., Althaus, N., & Plunkett, K. (2021). The role of labels and motions in infant category learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 205. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00339
Althaus, N., & Westermann, G. (2016). Labels constructively shape object categories in 10-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.11.013
Althaus, N., & Plunkett, K. (2016). Categorization in infancy: labeling induces a persisting focus on commonalities. Developmental Science, 19(5), 770–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12358
Althaus, N., & Plunkett, K. (2015). Timing matters: The impact of label synchrony on infant categorisation. Cognition, 139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.02.004
Althaus, N., & Mareschal, D. (2014). Labels direct infants’ attention to commonalities during novel category learning. PLoS ONE, 9(7). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099670
Althaus, N., & Mareschal, D. (2012). Using Saliency Maps to Separate Competing Processes in Infant Visual Cognition. Child Development, 83(4), 1122–1128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01766.x
CV
2006 MA Linguistics, Computer Science & Psychology University of Tübingen, Germany
2010 PhD Psychology CBCD, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
2009-2010 Oxford Brookes BabyLab, Oxford Brookes University
2010-2016 Oxford University BabyLab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
2014-2016 Language & Brain Lab, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford
2012-2016 Winkler Career Development Fellow, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
Since 2016 Lecturer, School of Psychology, UEA
Lab & Research Team
Current Lab Team:
Jacob Bowers, PhD Candidate
Hannah Johnson, MSc Developmental Science
Gabrielle Hunter-Short, MSc Developmental Science
Lydia De'Ath, Research Volunteer
I supervise 3rd year research projects. If you are a UEA BSc Psychology student interested in doing a project with me in 2022/23, please do get in touch.
More information about our infant research at UEA can be found on the website of the Developmental Dynamics Lab.
Contact
Phone: +44 (0)1603 59 2522
initial dot lastname at uea.ac.uk
@NadjaAlthaus