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23. 12. 2023
With immense regret, we add our condolences and express our sincere sympathy to all those who lost loved ones in Thursday’s tragic attack at the Faculty of Arts. Our deepest sympathies go out to our colleagues, friends and classmates.
Our thoughts are with you at this unimaginably painful time.
8. 12. 2023
Just before Christmas, on Friday 22nd of December at 12:00, the Conference Under the Christmas Tree 2023: Ideas that Change the World will take place in Karolinum. Kateřina Chládková will participate in a mini-workshop (PI_Forum @KPS2023) where she will talk with other scientists about what it is like to start your own research group in the Czech Republic and how to come up with original research topics. We look forward to seeing you in this pre-Christmas time!
27. 11. 2023
What all do we need to synchronize in order to acquire language and use it to communicate? You can listen to Kateřina Chládková’s lecture Synchronisation of body, brain and speech rhythms for language acquisition, which took place as part of Biology Thursday at the Faculty of Science of Charles University, here.
12. 11. 2023
Tomorrow, Kateřina Chládková will give a lecture The Magic of Learning the Language in Childhood and Adulthood at Palacký University as part of Week of Humanities 2023. We look forward to meeting you in Olomouc!
2. 11. 2023
Next week, the Week of the Czech Academy of Sciences 2023 takes place in Prague. On Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 a.m., you can visit our lab and see the EEG, try out speech illusions, accent recognition or lip reading, and learn about language acquisition and human cognition.
Then on Saturday, November 11, we follow up with a specialized program, Secrets of Bimodal Bilingualism, where we’ll talk about multilingual upbringing, discuss the most common myths about bilingualism, focus on acquiring sign language and spoken Czech, and try a fun experiment. The program is designed primarily for CODA families (children who know both sign and spoken language, and deaf parents), but anyone interested in bilingualism is welcome!
We look forward to seeing you!
31. 10. 2023
Five young scientists were awarded the Lumina quaeruntur prize by the Czech Academy of Sciences. Our Kateřina Chládková was one of them: “Speech happens in the human body – it is not separated from it. And the physical embodiment also determines how we learn or use language.” Congratulations!
30. 10. 2023
On Thursday 9th November, the conference Does the human brain stand a chance? about the human brain, faith, learning and technology, will take place in Prague. Kateřina Chládková will give a lecture How we can hear what no one has said (at 16:10). We look forward to seeing you!
You can listen to the lecture here.
23. 10. 2023
This Wednesday Martina Dvořáková will be presenting a poster at the Many Paths to Language conference in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The poster will be on the topic of her dissertation, which investigates how our brain is prepared for speech (Neural preparedness for spoken language: Neural speech tracking in newborns of Czech-speaking, Russian-speaking, and signing mothers, supervised by Kateřina Chládková and consultant Jan Kremláček).
Speakinb is also part of the international ManyBabies project, which investigates cross-linguistic comparisons of toddlers’ preferences for infant-directed speech (IDS). A poster on this topic will be presented at the conference, Preference for Infant-Directed Speech in 6-9-month-old
infants: A cross-linguistic, cross-laboratory approach (Soderstrom et al.).
26. 9. 2023
Today, as part of the European Day of Languages, Kateřina Chládková spoke in Studio 6 (Czech Television) about effective methods of language learning and other topics (time 2:19:00).
You could also see the report of the European Day of Languages at Hybernská here (TV Déčko, Zprávičky, time 00:55).
20. 9. 2023
The UA-CZ Science Meetup will be held on Wednesday, October 27th at the Bakala Foundation Student Center. Kateřina Chládková will give a lecture on Being a humanities & social science researcher in Czechia. For those interested in research in the humanities and social sciences, the event is highly recommended. The programme starts at 17:00, and it will also be possible to join online.
8. 9. 2023
We are pleased to invite you to the European Day of Languages 2023, which will take place on 26 September at the Hybernská Campus in Prague. This year’s theme is the languages of Central Europe. The programme includes mini-courses of a wide range of languages, workshops, lectures, an escape game or an exhibition. We at speakinlab will organize workshops on language acquisition, both native and foreign, perception of accents, and the related social aspects of speech. We are looking forward to seeing you!
10. 8. 2023
We are looking forward to the Summer School of Linguistics 2023, which will be held from 12th to 19th August in České Budějovice. Kateřina Chládková will give a trio of lectures about language, body and brain: Auditory language, Visual language & Language in the brain and body.
14. 7. 2023
In an invited lecture at the University of Tübingen on Wednesday, 19th of July, Katka Chládková will talk about language acquisition in Czech infants and how research on early Czech language acquisition – which has not yet been explored – helps to our understanding of language in general.
13. 6. 2023
Forbes magazine has selected the Top 23 female scientists from the Czech Republic, among those is our Kateřina Chládková. Congratulations! You can read her locket, in which she shares how children influence a scientific career and what is the best or worst thing in science here.
Kateřina talks about her scientific focus and her findings in the follow-up interview called We learn languages badly, babies do better here.
24. 5. 2023
We are pleased to invite you to the Science Fair 2023, which will take place from 8th to 10th June in Letňany, Prague. Visit the stands of FFUK or LABELS. Fun tasks on language will be prepared for you!
14. 5. 2023
In Czech Television’s Věda 24, we briefly talked about the role of mother tongue and accent in the way we choose friends. You can watch the report at this link (time 18:40).
The report is followed by a more detailed interview with Kateřina Chládková about language, its acquisition and social role in Studio ČT24 (time 12:10).
5. 5. 2023
The paper Language-based social preferences of children: the influence of regional dialect on friendship choice has been accepted in the journal Československá psychologie. Congratulations to colleagues Natálie Kikoťová and Natalia Nudga and interns Jana Šimsová and Zita Maršíková!
2. 5. 2023
The event Science Café is just around the corner! You can listen to Kateřina Chládková’s and Anežka Kuzmičová’s talk on How babies become native speakers and readers on 9 May 2023 from 19:00 at the Hybernská Campus.
You can watch the lecture here.
11. 4. 2023
We are pleased to invite you to the ICPhS 2023 Congress in Prague in August, which we are co-organizing this year. In the form of a poster, Michaela Svoboda will present a study on changes in IDS (infant-directed speech) during the first year of life. Kateřina Chládková will talk about the distributive learning from foreign vs. native accents/rhythms in children.
In May, our students Natálie Kikoťová and Lucie Jarůšková are going to attend YLMP2023 in Poznan, a conference of young linguists, where they will present two experiments on language-based social preferences in preschool children, applied to the Czech environment.
22. 3. 2023
Join us at the linguistic conference Olinco 2023. Natalia Nudga will present a study on the perception of word stress The perceptual reality of Czech word stress in native and non-native listeners. We also invite you to a talk by Filip Maroš from the PSÚ AVČR on neural processing of sentences in Czech, co-authored by Filip Smolík and Kateřina Chládková. And the Dovyko project will be presented – a diagnostic tool for measuring language development in young children, led by Nikola Paillereau, on which cooperated Kateřina Chládková, Lucie Jarůšková, Kateřina Kynčlová, Zuzana Oceláková and Veronika Ungrová together with colleagues from PSÚ AVČR.
One of the keynote lectures will be Language Learning Beginnings by Kateřina Chládková, who will reveal the differences and similarities between the beginnings of native and foreign language learning. The lecture will be followed by a workshop by Šarka Šimáček and Jonáš Podlipský, where you can learn about phonetics, syllables and prosody of native and foreign languages.
We look forward to seeing you in Olomouc on 8-10th of June!
13. 3. 2023
The Brain Awareness Week 2023, a scientific festival of the latest discoveries and trends in brain research and neuroscience, is taking place this week. Come to the AVČR building on Národní Street in Prague on Thursday at 11:00 a.m. to listen to a lecture by Kateřina Chládková on the Rhythm of the Brain, Body and Speech about how speech is connected to cognition and the body’s biorhythm.
20. 2. 2023
Two of our abstracts have been accepted for the international conference PaPE 2023. One paper is on the Influence of orthography on i-y contrast production in Opava and Prague (Šimáčková et al.) and the other on the Influence of prosody on statistical learning and word segmentation in Czech infants (Chládková et al.). The projects are joint with Václav Jonáš Podlipský, Nikola Paillereau and Natalia Nudga. Join us in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, June 2–4, 2023!
3. 2. 2023
Join us at the Cognitive School 2023, which we are co-organizing again this year. In a short talk, Martina will present a study on neuromethods in linguistics (joint with colleagues from Germany and Katka Ch.), and Natálie Kikoťová with Lucka Jarůšková and Katka Chládková will be talking about how language affects social cognition. The date of the event is February 17–19, 2023.