SPEAKIN Lab is a research group doing speech and language science. Our main interests are speech learning and adaptation, speech perception and production, and their dynamics across the lifespan, languages, language varieties, and accents. For more detail on what we do exactly, please see the projects page.
We’re scientists and students affiliated with the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and the Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Králové. Our experiments run mostly in LABELS, a.k.a. Laboratory of Behavioural and Linguistic Studies, as well as at schools, hospitals, and at collaborating institutions. We collaborate closely with the English department at Palacký University in Olomouc, as well as with universities and research institutes in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Australia.
Since its establishment in 2018, the research of our laboratory has been continuously funded from various external and internal sources. We have been supported by grants from the Czech Science Foundation, the Grant Agency of Charles University, the European Regional Development Fund and the Czech Ministry of Education, and programs supporting excellent research from Charles University (Primus program) and the Academy of Sciences (Lumina Quaeruntur).
We’re looking for little monolingual and bilingual participants. Do you have a child aged 1-30 months? Sign up for our research! In addition to learning about language acquisition, there is a reward waiting for you.
What’s new
17. 7. 2024
How to learn a foreign language effectively, in childhood and adulthood? Is there an (anti)talent for languages? Do I do irreversible damage if I speak to my child with mistakes? Do bilingual children have any handicaps?
Kateřina Chládková answers these and other questions in her interview Jak a kdy je nejlepší „nasát“ cizí jazyk [How and when it is best to “absorb” a foreign language] for Deník N.
If you prefer to listen, you can also listen to the interview Učíme se víc gramatiku, než schopnost komunikovat [We learn more grammar than the ability to communicate] for the Inbox podcast about the language learning and Czech education system, the functionality of the popular Duolingo app or the myths surrounding bilingualism.
26. 6. 2024
In July we will attend the prestigious international conference COGSCI 2024 in the Netherlands. The studies will be presented by Kateřina Chládková (Tuning in to a novel language is easier without orthography), Kateřina Kynčlová (Neural Indices of Online Statistical Learning in Visual Speech), Martina Dvořáková (Newborns’ neural tracking of infant-directed and adult-directed speech in native and foreign language) and Natálie Kikót’ová (Neural oscillatory and ERP indices of prediction in emotional speech).
We are also co-organizing the IASCL 2024, international conference on language acquisition in children, which will take place this July in Prague at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. We are looking forward to you!
28. 5. 2024
In June, we will be participating in the Workshop on Infant Language Development 2024 in Lisbon. Michaela Svoboda (Verbal and conceptual development of vocabulary in Czech-learning children with cochlear implants), Martina Dvořáková (Newborns’ neural tracking of infant-directed and adult-directed speech in native and foreign language) and Lucie Jarůšková (Preferences for L1-accented speakers in Czech-learning toddlers: behavioural and neural indices) will present their studies in the form of a poster.
Our Instagram
We look forward to you!
