Iza Škrjanec is a third-year PhD student at Saarland University in Germany. Her research lies at the intersection of natural language processing and computational psycholinguistics. She explores how language models can both implement and inform theories of human language processing. During her short-term scientific mission at Radboud University (24/03/2025-23/05/2025, hosted by Stefan Frank), she worked on computational models of bilingual lexical processing.
“This year I spent a couple of months at Radboud University in Nijmegen to focus on building models that would help us understand and test theories about bilingual processing of words that appear in multiple languages: cognates and false friends. These models are complementary to existing behavioral data from eye-tracking and self-paced reading which show that bilingual speakers process cognates and false friends in a different way than monolingual speakers. The visit combined two topics which are highlighted in MultiplEYE as well, namely bilingualism and computational modeling.
I am very thankful to my host Stefan Frank for great discussions and guidance. I am also very happy that I had the opportunity to meet and work with Irene Winther, Sybrine Bultena, and Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. The work atmosphere in Stefan’s lab was inspiring and collaborative. And the daily commute to work by bike was a joy!
To learn more about my project, or to catch some impressions from the Netherlands you can watch my video: https://tinyurl.com/4tsbxnym
During my stay, I presented our project at the Donders Day. In September, I will present our results at the AMLaP conference in Prague!
Thank you, MultiplEYE, for making this research stay possible! It was valuable for my career and for me personally.”
