Abstracts 2025

The TEAM conference 2025 features six invited talks by international researchers who will discuss the latest insights and developments in the field of language acquisition and multilingualism.

Browse the title and abstracts below, and don't forget to register before January 15, 2025! 

Exploring word definitions in bilingual children: Unpacking variability

Ifigeneia Dosi, Zoe Gavriilidou & Chrysa Dourou
Democritus University of Thrace
09:10 – 10:00 CET

In this talk, we explore the word definition skills of bilingual children who have Greek as one of their languages. Our series of studies examine how children define words in Greek, focusing on key word-level characteristics, including grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives), semantic characteristics (concrete vs. abstract words), and morphological structure (simple vs. compound words). We also investigate the influence of broader variables such as expressive vocabulary, verbal working memory, and contextual factors like language exposure and use in oral or written form. Through this investigation, we aim to unpack the variability observed in bilingual children's word definition abilities and highlight the interplay between linguistic, cognitive, and contextual factors. The findings offer valuable insights for linguistics, educators and clinicians working with bilingual children, emphasizing the importance of tailoring approaches to the unique needs of this population.

Multilingualism and cognition: Unravelling the interplay between language experience and lower-level phonological to higher-level cognitive function

Narly Golestani
University of Vienna
10:15 – 11:05 CET

Language is hierarchically structured, requiring the integration of phonetic, semantic, syntactic, and prosodic information with domain-general cognitive skills such as memory and executive control. In this talk, I will explore how bilingualism and multilingualism influence these interactions, drawing on recent findings from behavioural and neuroimaging studies. I will talk about our work on the relative influences of nature and of nurture on phonological processing and on the auditory cortex, and at higher levels of processing, that multilingual experience shows complex, likely bilateral relationships with broader cognitive skills, particularly on memory and executive control, and on the neural underpinnings of these. This research area has implications for understanding both typical and disordered language processing, at different points in development, and it underscores the complex interaction of nature and nurture in shaping the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying language learning and use.

Improving the measurement of daily life: Recent methodological developments in Experience Sampling Research

Gudrun Vera Eisele
KU Leuven
11:20 – 12:10 CET

The Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) is a powerful tool for capturing fluctuations in behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. Administering repeated, short questionnaires per day over several days can reduce recall biases and significantly improve our understanding of individuals’ daily lives. Therefore, ESM offers exciting applications across various research fields, including language use research. However, the high-intensity sampling in ESM studies is also associated with unique methodological challenges that can impact the validity of findings. Fortunately, the growing popularity of ESM has led to an acceleration in related methodological research in recent years. In this talk, I will discuss some of these novel methodological developments. First, I will review key aspects of ESM data quality and quantity, including their assessment and impact on research outcomes. I will then discuss the role of ESM study design in shaping data quality and quantity, with a focus on strategies for optimizing sampling frequency, questionnaire length, and the use of incentives to boost participant engagement. Finally, I will zoom in on the topic of measurement in ESM studies and discuss current practices in questionnaire design and validation, associated challenges and novel resources.

I’ve got the willingness vibe: How experiential-emotion systems enhance our understanding of WTC

Peter MacIntyre
Cape Breton University, Canada
13:40 – 14:30 CET

The concept of willingness to communicate has been evolving toward ever more dynamic conceptualizations (Henry & MacIntyre, 2023; MacIntyre, 2020). Originally defined as a trait-like probability of initiating communication when free to do so (McCroskey & Richmond, 1991), recent research in SLA has emphasized how WTC is constructed and re-constructed on-the-fly. It has become clear that this requires an updated conceptual map of the antecedents underlying WTC.  Building on the pyramid model of WTC (MacIntyre et al., 1998), this presentation will discuss a more highly variable, context-dependent, multilingual version of the construct: a 3-D pyramid.

Among the theoretical roots of this conceptualization is Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (CEST; Epstein, 2003). According to Epstein, the concept of "vibes" plays a significant role in rapidly changing emotion systems, influencing both individual emotional experiences and social interactions. Vibes can be understood as subtle emotional states that arise from past experiences and social contexts, affecting how individuals perceive and respond to their immediate environment, including language choices. Vibes can change very quickly and are integrated into emotion systems through various psychological and sociological frameworks. Vibes are generated from past experiences, subtly guiding present emotional responses and behaviors (Gregersen et al., 2014). Moreover, the social transmission of vibes is crucial in understanding emotional dynamics within groups. Fredrickson and Joiner (2002) argue that positive emotions create upward spirals of emotional well-being, broadening individuals' thought processes and enhancing their ability to connect with others. The continuous arousal of vibes in L2 social situations (positive, negative, or ambivalent) contribute significantly to the WTC system, functioning as both individual emotional states and social phenomena. Understanding vibes within these frameworks can enhance our comprehension of emotional dynamics in various settings, from personal relationships to broader social interactions.

Meaning construction: The heart of compound processing

Christina L. Gagné & Thomas L. Spalding
University of Alberta
14:50 – 15:40 CET

Cognitive productivity, the ability to combine known concepts and words into new meanings and linguistic constructions, is one of the most important human abilities.  Compound words (e.g., houseboat) consist of subunits which themselves have meaning; their morphemic structure specifies constituent position and allows the system to distinguish between houseboat and boathouse.  Because compounds are the smallest linguistic unit where semantic composition is possible, they provide an ideal testing ground for examining how the various components of the language and conceptual systems allow for compositionality.  In this talk, we will discuss evidence from psycholinguistic research that indicates that identifying the meaning of compound words involves a meaning construction process rather than solely relying on direct retrieval of a pre-stored meaning. In particular, we will demonstrate that construction draws on a range of linguistic and cognitive information such as conceptual, semantic, morphological, and orthographic information, as well as cognitive skills and personal traits, including attentional skills, metacognitive beliefs about the nature of compounding, and creativity. In addition, we present findings that suggest that meaning construction is obligatory and triggered whenever people encounter words that permit a compound morphemic structure, even when that structure is not correct, as is the case for pseudo-compounds such as bigram, which is not formed from big + ram.   Based on these various streams of research, we conclude that compound processing is a creative act that is fundamentally based on a diverse set of psycholinguistic processes and information. 

Computational architecture of speech comprehension

Laura Gwilliams
Stanford University
16:00 – 16:50 CET

Humans understand speech with such speed and accuracy, it belies the complexity of transforming sound into meaning. The goal of my research is to develop a theoretically grounded, biologically constrained and computationally explicit account of how the human brain achieves this feat. In my talk, I will present a series of studies that examine neural responses at different spatial scales: From population ensembles using magnetoencephalography and electrocorticography, to the encoding of speech properties in individual neurons across the cortical depth using Neuropixels probes in humans. The results provide insight into (i) what auditory and linguistic representations serve to bridge between sound and meaning; (ii) what operations reconcile auditory input speed with neural processing time; (iii) how information at different timescales is nested, in time and in space, to allow information exchange across hierarchical structures. My work showcases the utility of combining cognitive science, machine-learning and neuroscience for developing neurally-constrained computational models of spoken language understanding.