uu77

Paula Fikkert investigates the acquisition of phonological representations and the role they play in early speech perception and production. Phonological representations mediate between the acoustic signal and meaning in speech perception and between meaning and the articulatory output in speech production. Thus, phonological representations in the brain lay the foundation for successful communication. Yet, the nature of phonological representations that are built up during language acquisition is far from clear. Other research topics she investigates are early indicators of developmental language problems, and how children learn to monitor their own speech and that of others. She has contributed to several databases of spontaneous speech of typically developing children (CLPF), children acquiring sign language (IPROSLA) and children with speech disorders (VALID).
She is PI in the BRC-lab

Paula Fikkert (PhD in Leiden, 1994, cum laude, AVT dissertation prize) worked at the University of Konstanz (Germany), the Nordic University in Tromsø (Noorwegen) and the Oxford University (UK). She held an Innovation Grant from NWO (2002-2007), and became Full Professor of Phonology and First Language Acquisition in 2007. She was research director of the Centre for Language Studies (CLS) at Radboud from 2011 to 2015, a member of the Humanities Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) until 2016, member of the Social Sciences and Humanities board of NWO until 2020. She was chair of the Recognition and Rewards committee at uu77 2021-2022. She was visiting professor at among others Oxford, MIT, Macquirie and Tromsø.

She published many articles, several (co-)authored books, many chapters/articles to edited volumes. Her work has appeared in journals such as Cognition, Phonology, Journal of Child Language, Language Learning and Development, PLOS one, Language Acquisition.