EDUCATION

2007 PhD in Psychology, K.U.Leuven, Belgium

2002 Master in Psychology, K.U.Leuven, Belgium

Currently, I'm a post doctoral fellow at the FWO.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am interested in mental representations of semantic concepts. Let me explain this research domain briefly.

Semantic concepts or categories have fuzzy boundaries and category membership is graded. For most categories, like furniture, there exist borderline cases, like carpet or desk lamp, that are not consistently assigned to the category. These exemplars are very atypical of the category furniture, in contrast to other exemplars, like chair and table that are very typical members of furniture.
Furthermore, recent cross-linguistic studies have revealed substantial differences in the way that speakers of different languages segment stimulus space by name.
The graded structure of categories and the cross-linguistic variation pose challenges for the mastery of a language. We want to study these challenges:

In a first line of research, we address the challenges to the bilingual in mastering two languages at the same time. You can find this interesting story here.
The second line of research deals with the challenges to the child in mastering a native language. Both lines of research focus on between-category structure.
In a last line of research, the focus shifts to the internal (graded) structure of categories. We want to investigate to what extent standard notions of similarity-based categorization can explain the graded structure of linguistic categories. The results of this investigation can be found here.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Centrum Hogere Cognitie en Individuele Verschillen
University of Leuven
Tiensestraat 102
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium

Tel.: +32-16-32.59.87
Fax: +32-16-32.59.16
E-mail address: eef|dot|ameel|at|psy.kuleuven.ac.be