Social distancing is changing our social interactions
The current pandemic has us keeping our distance to reduce contagion, but is the physical distance affecting our social interactions? And how is it changing the way we speak?
Monica Wagner
Having been raised with two languages herself, Mónica Wagner is interested in how people use and learn multiple languages, especially when it comes to the sounds of languages. During her licence in psychology (National University of Córdoba, Argentina) she looked into whether people who speak two (or more) languages, when wanting to say the word for ‘dog,’ consider the name in both of their languages. Then, during her Master’s in cognitive neuroscience (Radboud University, The Netherlands), she looked at the other side of the coin: whether bilinguals can selectively listen in one of their languages (sometimes even the wrong one!) and the role of the context they’re in at the moment or whether or not the speaker has a foreign accent. Currently Mónica is working on her PhD at the Donders Centre for Cognition (The Netherlands), where she’s studying individual differences in foreign accent, that is, why some people struggle so much to get rid of their foreign accent in a second language, while others seem to be able to acquire a nativelike accent almost effortlessly. She is new to the Donders Wonders team but will likely blog a lot about her favorite topics: languages, bilinguals, and accents!
In celebration of 500 Donders Wonders blogs: a look back
The Donders Wonders has reached 500 blog posts! To celebrate, today we take a look back at those 500 blogs.
Can you forget your mother tongue?
A lot of people assume that you can’t forget your mother tongue. However, although traces of it may persist forever, it is entirely possible to lose the ability to communicate in your native language. Here, we explore why and how this happens.
The Mental Health Crisis in Academia
Mental health researchers have made a lot of progress over the years in furthering our knowledge of psychological disorders, and thankfully awareness of mental health issues is slowly increasing. However, did you know that there’s a high prevalence of mental health issues among researchers themselves?
How do you measure the worth of a scientist?
If evaluated by today’s system, many of the greatest scientists of all time wouldn’t make the cut. So what’s wrong with how we’re assessing scientists?
How changes in our prehistoric ancestors’ diet may have determined how our languages sound today
Scientists have long assumed that the sounds humans can make are limited by our biology. New evidence shows, however, that it may be thanks to a change in our prehistoric ancestors’ diet that most languages today have ‘f’ and ‘v’ sounds.
That word on the tip of your tongue
Don’t you hate it when you can’t remember a word you know you know? What causes this and why do we seemingly remember the words out of nowhere?
Are picky eaters really just highly sensitive tasters?
Pickiness in eating is often associated with a lack of sophistication or just plain fussiness
“That’s what she they said”: Can we change language to diminish sexism?
Lots of languages have been scrutinized for being sexist or not gender-inclusive, with some people
The value of basic research
There are so many things to research: medicine, rockets, farming methods, all with clear goals