Anna Martinez-Alvarez

I am a post-doctorate researcher working on the ERC project BabyRhythm of Judit Gervain.

I am interested in understanding the cognitive mechanisms involved in infant language acquisition. I am investigating how infants learn grammar, as well as how prosody perceived in utero guides infants’ learning post-natally. To answer these question, I use optical brain imaging (fNIRS) measuring infants’ speech perception and learning abilities.

I obtained my PhD in ‘Brain, Cognition and Behavior’ at the University of Barcelona. During my PhD, I investigated how attentional mechanisms assist language rule learning in infants, children with and without Specific Language Impairment and healthy adults, under the supervision of Ruth de Diego-Balaguer and Ferran Pons at the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit and the Attention, Perception and Language Acquisition Research Groups.

My main research objectives are:
1.  To understand the cognitive mechanisms involved in language acquisition
2.  To examine how attention modulates the way language rules are learned in typical and atypical language development.

My research interests also extend to areas such as developmental neuroscience, infant cognition, attention and consciousness, language neuroscience, and clinical linguistics.

RESEARCH AFFILIATIONS

I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization at the University of Padua, Italy (August 2020 – ongoing).

I was currently a post-doctoral researcher in Paris, at the LPP Babylab (Université Paris Descartes & CNRS) (Feb 2019 – July 2020).

During my PhD, I was a member of the APAL infant lab (University of Barcelona) and the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit (University of Barcelona).