I am a post-doctoral research fellow (FWO) at Wouter Duyck’s lab (Ghent University) and collaborating with Riikka Möttönen’s lab at the University of Nottingham (UK) and the University of Helsinki (Finland). Together, we are investigating the role of cognitive mechanisms and auditory-motor mechanisms in language learning across the human life span, by combining TMS, EEG and behavioural tasks (e.g., auditory statistical learning, phonotactic constraint learning and artificial grammar learning). We test the hypothesis that auditory-motor mechanisms contribute to implicit language learning, but interfere with higher cognitive abilities as a function of age. This will advance our theoretical understanding of why some people, such as children, are better language learners than others, such as adults, and bring new insights in how cognitive development affects (a)typical language learning across the human life span.
