Ranka Bijeljac-Babic
Retired Associate Professor – Hosted
Most babies are likely to learn several languages. I am trying to understand how children who are bilingual from birth acquire their two languages. Currently, I study monolingual and bilingual infants’ ability to perceive and produce the accentuation of words in different languages.
Ongoing project
Geometries Return
Building on a previous ANR project (“Geometries”), this new project aims at characterizing the geometric content of form representations across a variety of formats (2D, 3D), presentation modalities (vision, touch), ages (infants, children, adults), and visual experience (sighted and blind participants).
Project team lead
Véronique Izard
Linking early phonolexical acquisition and later vocabulary development
In this project, we test the proposal that a crucial milestone in language acquisition is reached when infants discover which sounds (consonants versus vowels) are more important at the lexical level in their native language, leading to an acceleration of subsequent vocabulary development.
Study of Visual Fixation in Neurodevelopmental Disorders
This project will measure visual fixation capabilities in 3 participant populations (Typical Development, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Cerebral Visual Impairment) to evaluate the prevalence of CVI in the ASD population.
Projet team lead
Sylvie Chokron
Projet team lead
Marie PIeron
Early development of cerebral representations of the body in infants: explorations in neuroimaging and behaviour
The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of how a baby’s brain perceives and represents different parts of its body in the first few months after birth, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioural assessments.
Project collaborator
Marianne Barbu-Roth
Effect of early training in crawling using a mini skateboard on the locomotor and motor development of very premature cerebral palsy patients
The project consists of evaluating the feasibility and effectiveness of 8 weeks of early stimulation training in quadruped walking on a mini skateboard, the Crawli skate, in 50 very premature babies at high risk of neurodevelopmental disorders and followed longitudinally.
Project collaborator
Marianne Barbu-Roth
Ticoala
Adaptation of a digital tool for assessing children’s language skills in nursery school.
Project team lead
Thierry Nazzi
Project team lead
Ranka Bijeljac-Babić
Recognition of faces at birth
This project aims to identify the different components of children’s interest when observing faces speaking and looking towards them or not.
Project team lead
Arlette Streri
Hearing development and speech perception in noise in children with cochlear implants
In this study we seek to better understand the capacity of the children’s auditory system to process non-linguistic acoustic signals, for children with implants but also for children with normal hearing.
Project team lead
Laurianne Cabrera
Development of speech perception in noise
This project specifically aims to characterize the sensory and non-sensory mechanisms involved in the development of speech perception in noise in normal-hearing and hard-of-hearing children.
Project team lead
Laurianne Cabrera
From object perception to tool use in early infancy
This project aims to understand how babies perceive you, assimilate actions with objects and then be able to manipulate them.
Project team lead
Jacqueline Fagard
Selected Publications
– Bijeljac-Babic, R. 2019. Développement du langage chez l’enfant monolingue et bilingue. In Le développement du bébé : de la vie foetale à la marche, E. Devouche et J. Provasi, Paris : Elsevier Masson.
– Höhle, B, Bijeljac-Babic, R., Nazzi, T. 2019. Variability and stability in early language acquisition: Comparing monolingual and bilingual infants’ speech perception and word recognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–16.
– Bijeljac-Babic R, Höhle B, Nazzi T. (2016). Early prosodic acquisition in bilingual infants: The case of the perceptual trochaic bias. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 210.
– Bijeljac-Babic R, Nassurally K, Havy M, Nazzi T. (2009). Infants can rapidly learn words in a foreign language. Infant Behavior and Development, 32, 476-480.
– Höhle B, Bijeljac-Babic R, Herold B, Weissenborn J, Nazzi T. (2009). The development of language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: evidence from German and French. Infant Behavior and Development, 32, 262-274.