Julia Chauvet
About Me
I'm a Ph.D. student working in the Psychology of Language department under the supervision of dr. Andrea E. Martin and prof. dr. Antje S. Meyer.
How do we articulate thoughts into spoken sounds? Because most accounts treat language planning and speech processes separately, their interface is underspecified. I bridge these domains by studying (i) how discrete linguistic plans (phonemes and metrical structure) are organized and sequenced into the articulatory system; (ii) how this mapping interacts with phrase-level prosody; and (iii) how the speech motor system represents and deploys well-practiced routines (“motor chunks”) versus assembling movements on the fly.
I use theoretical, behavioural, electrophysiological, and computational (neurocognitive) modelling to address these issues. We have replicated that syllable frequency facilitates speech motor planning—frequent syllables yield faster reaction times and distinct ERP signatures during planning. Unexpectedly, we also observed longer articulation durations for frequent syllables; future work will assess the robustness and interpretation of this effect. A second line of work uses computational modelling to simulate speech sequencing and the assignment of segments to syllable positions within a metrical frame. Current projects examine how lexical stress interfaces with phrase-level prosody.
Previously, I was affiliated at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience and worked as a research assistant at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour. I graduated from the Research Master's Neuroscience at the Free University of Amsterdam, and the Bachelor’s Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. I was also trained at Sorbonne Université and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ulm.
For publications, presentations, and further details, see my CV; if you'd like to discuss or find out more, feel free to get in touch!
Research Interests
- Language and speech production
- Theories of language production and speech motor control
- Electrophysiology
- Neurocognitive computational modeling
