Units

Laboratory of Cognition, Language, and Development

Person in charge of the Unit : Oui

The research focus of the LCLD concerns the study of human cognition, language, and speech perception with a developmental and educational perspective, a field also known as developmental or educational neuroscience. Although a large part of the research is based on behavioral experimental techniques, with normally developing children, children with cognitive or sensory developmental impairments and adult participants, current projects also integrate computational modelling as well as neuroimaging techniques (ERP, fMRI, MEG). The lab has a long tradition of research on visual word recognition processes, and on reading and spelling acquisition in typical and atypical development, as well as on speech perception. Major themes of active investigation at the moment concern aspects of language processing and reading; spoken and printed word recognition processes; written language acquisition disorders (dyslexia/dysgraphia); novel word reading; reading motivation and engagement; speech perception; speech-in-noise perception; language development in hearing-impaired persons.
LCLD is a member of CRCN (http://crcn.ulb.ac.be) and UNI (https://uni.ulb.ac.be).

Projetcs

L'impact de l'exposition à l'écrit

Acquisition of the reading and the spelling and its troubles.

Developmental study of the acquisiton of reading and spelling in its phonological, lexical and morphosyntactical aspects. In parallel, study of the nature of acquisition disorders. Determination of profiles of developmental dyslexias across languages.

L'apprentissage de nouveaux mots via la lecture

Extraction processes of visuo-orthographic units in written words

The aim of the project is to determine what internal characteristics of words underlie their structuration into visuo-orthographic units during the early stages of reading. Especially, we examine to what extent word properties such as abstract consonantal skeleton, orthographic redundancy, or grapheme units influence reading unit perception. At the same time, we assess whether visuo-orthographic structuration of words is compatible with phonological (e.g., syllables) and/or semantic (e.g., morphemes) units. These issues are developed in both a developmental perspective (adults/children comparisons) and a neuro-psychological perspective (investigation of both the time course of processes underlying word structuration, and localisation of the neuronal corresponding structure).

Le rôle de l'engagement dans l'activité de lecture

Bindings to see and hear a word

Bindings are ubiquitous. To recognize an object, we combine the features it is made of. We also integrate informations from various sense to build a unified and stable percept of the external world. However, how we bind is still mysterious. Here we investigate the differents bindings to perceive a word as text, speech, and simultaneous text and speech.