The effect of bilingualism on speech perception and production in the first year of life
A five-year project JUNIOR STAR led by Dr. Paillereau and supported by the Czech Science Foundation is intended for excellent young scientists. Aims to complement studies of early speech acquisition with data from bilingual children in their first year of life. Will primarily consist of longitudinal studies comparing Czech monolingual and bilingual children.
Methods applied:
The project will make use of both cognitive-behavioral and neuro-imaging methods (fNIRS and EEG) as well as analysis of production data from home recordings.
Outcomes and publications:
The project started on January 1, 2024. Participant recruitment is starting in the spring of 2024.
Collaboration:
Dr. Torsten Wüstenberg (CNSR, Heidelberg) and prof. Sophie Kern (DDL, Lyon) are members of the project’s International advisory board.
Dovyko: Adapting MB-CDIs: Words and Gestures and Words and Sentences into Czech
A three-year project supported by TA ČR in 2020–2023, which included several LemonLab members and was led by Dr. Paillereau. It primarily focused on designing the Czech adaptation of CDI: WG (an international language-assessment tool for children aged 0;8–1;4), modifying the Czech adaptation of CDI: WS (adapted by Smolík et al., 2017), and providing norms for both questionnaires.
Methods applied:
The tools were validated in an eye-tracking experiment (looking-while-listening paradigm) and were also tested for reliability. The questionnaires were normed against more than 1,000 children each.
Outcomes and publications:
Dovyko I and Dovyko II manuals and norms (currently available at www.dovyko.cz).
Several conference posters and presentations, including at Olinco in Olomouc (2023) and BUCLD in Boston (2023).
Organizing a two-day conference for researchers and experts in children’s language assessment.
Papers:
Jarůšková, L., Smolík, F., Chládková, K., Oceláková, Z., & Paillereau, N. (2023). How to build a communicative development inventory: Insights from 43 adaptations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(6), 2095–2117. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00591
Jarůšková, L.*, Sloupová, T.*, Smolík, F., Chládková, K., Oceláková, Z., & Paillereau, N. (in print). Developing Dovyko I: The Czech Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Československá psychologie. *Shared first-authorship.
Collaboration:
The full list of the adaptation team listed: Nikola Paillereau, Filip Smolík, Tereza Sloupová, Kateřina Chládková, Lucie Jarůšková, Tereza Fialová, Barbora Dvořáková, Zuzana Oceláková, Veronika Ungrová, Kateřina Kynčlová, Jiří Pešek, and Šárka Kadavá. It followed the work of F. Smolík, J. Turková, K. Marušincová, and V. Malechová.
The project included application guarantors from the University Hospital in Motol, prof. MUDr. Jan Lebl, CSc., Mgr. Zuzana Kocábová, Ph.D.
Czech Emotional-Word List for Children (CEWL-CH)
The project aimed to develop a Czech emotional word list for children aged 1.5 to 4 years – an adaptation of a list for English-learning children by Ridgeway et al. (1985) and Baron-Cohen et al. (2010). As the progression of children’s understanding of emotions is shaped by their acquisition of emotion-related vocabulary, small emotional vocabulary can signal certain developing disorders. The CEWL-CH parent report is easy to administrate and could be used as a screening test.
Methods applied:
The normative data include almost 300 Czech toddlers.
Outcomes and publications:
Poster at the Emotions 23 Conference (Tilburg, Netherlands, October 2023). Percentile norms are being calculated and a validation study is in progress.
Collaboration:
The adaptation team consisted of Dr. Nikola Paillereau and several high-school students within the Open Science program of the CAS: Marie Křivánková, Valentýna Mikutová & Eliška Bejčková (Faculty of Pedagogy, Charles University).
Mapping emotion to space – A new method for the assessment of valence and arousal
Valence and arousal ratings of words are generally collected using Self-Assessment-Manikins (Lang, 1980) or ordinal scales. The Czech-German team has introduced and tested a „single mouse click“ method using a 2D space (with valence and arousal).
The collaboration will also bring interesting cross-linguistic comparisons in Czech and German data, in both the ratings and their neuro-physiological correlates.
Methods applied:
The reliability of the new method was verified against Czech (Preininger et al., 2022) and German (Vö et al., 2009) norming data. The mouse-click data was collected within a multi-modal experiment including fNIRS and eye-tracking measuring.
Outcomes and publications:
Poster at the Emotions 23 Conference (Tilburg, Netherlands, October 2023).
The fNIRS and eye-tracking data are now being analyzed.
Collaboration:
The current team includes: Dr. Nikola Paillereau, Dr. Johannes Gerwien (University of Heidelberg), Tereza Fialová, Bc Jiří Pešek (Charles University), and Dr. Torsten Wüstenberg (University of Heidelberg).
Language and dialect: the effect of social class
The project aims to describe phonetic and phonological properties of the Czech Ostrava dialect in students of different education levels and social classes.
Outcomes and publications:
The project is currently in progress. Previous publications on the topic include:
Šimáčková, Š., Podlipský, J., Nudga, N., Paillereau, N., & Chládková, K. (accepted). Conflicting effects of orthography on the de-regionalization of adolescent speech. In Proceedings of the Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2023.
Collaboration:
The project was realized within the CAS Open Science program, with high-school student Ester Zientková.