Paul Okyere Omane
Postdoctoral Researcher
I am a postdoctoral researcher studying language acquisition and processing in bi- and multilingual infants and toddlers, particularly those from underrepresented communities and those learning understudied languages. My research project focuses on cross-linguistic approaches to early lexical acquisition and processing in both native and non-native languages.
Ongoing projects
Language acquisition in atypical development
Knowing the mechanisms underlying typical language acquisition also makes it possible to explore whether or not these mechanisms are present in populations with atypical language acquisition and could be involved in their learning difficulties.
Project team lead
Thierry Nazzi
Lexical-semantic development
Our studies aim to understand the neural mechanisms underlying this development in monolingual and bilingual children.
Project team lead
Pia Rämä
Acquisition of phonological biases in lexical processing
We aim to understand how different types of sounds, as well as their arrangements within the words of a language, influence the acquisition and lexical processing of French, German, and Franco-German bilingual speakers.
Project team lead
Thierry Nazzi
Vocabulary growth and sound symbolism
Our aim is to study whether the sensitivity to sound symbolism in infancy is linked to emerging vocabulary skills.
Project team lead
Pia Rämä
Voice familiarity in the processing of word meanings
This project aims to investigate whether familiarity with the speaker’s voice facilitates lexical-semantic processing in infants.
Project team lead
Pia Rämä
Selected Publications
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2024). Vowel harmony preferences in infants growing up in multilingual Ghana (Africa).Developmental Psychology, 60(8), 1372–1383. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001776
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025). Exploring the nature of multilingual input to infants in multiple caregiver families in an African city: The case of Accra (Ghana). Cognitive Development, 74, 101558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101558
Omane, P.O., Isaiah, A.A., Duah, R.A., & Nazzi, T. (2025). Sustaining language acquisition research in Africa: A commentary on Scaff, Loukatou, Cristia, and Havron (2025). Developmental Science, 28, e70063. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70063