STSM testimonial – Analysis of the MultiplEYE pilot data for Croatian

Eva Pavlinušić Vilus is a posdoctoral researcher at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, Department of Speech and Language Pathology. She has participated in several aspects of the preparatory work for the MultiplEYE data collection (e.g., translation of the MultiplEYE texts and instructions, translation of the psychometric tools, preparations for the pilot testing of the comprehension questions). She completed her STSM at the Department of Computational Linguistics at the University of Zurich from 11/06/2024 to 19/06/2024. During the STSM period she worked on the final version of the Croatian translation and started testing the experiment with Croatian stimuli, tested the implementation of psychometric tests for Croatian and finally performed the piloting of the psychometric tests in Croatian.

In June this year I spent ten days on an STSM in Zürich, at the Department of Computational Linguistics led by Prof. Dr. Lena Jäger. My host was Cui Ding, a wonderful PhD student at the Digital Linguistics Lab, with whom I have been collaborating since I joined the MultiplEYE COST Action. Our goal during my STSM was to pilot the MultiplEYE core experiment and psychometric tests in Croatian. After having checked once again whether all the materials for Croatian were ready and up-to-date, and finalizing the translation of the comprehension questions to Croatian, we started testing the implementation of the psychometric tests. Some minor bugs in the implementation were detected, which Cui quickly fixed. We successfully ran the psychometric tests in Croatian, and were really happy about it. The same was done for the main experiment implementation, with help and guidance from Deborah Jakobi, another talented and enthusiastic PhD student at the Digital Linguistics Lab. Finally, when the experiment was running perfectly, we piloted it with me as participant, and thus the Croatian language made history as the first non-English language piloted within the MultiplEYE COST Action!
For me as a person with no experience in programming, actively participating in the process of testing the experiments was an immensely valuable experience. I met many talented young researchers during my time in Zürich, and enjoyed some truly insightful conversations during lunch breaks with Dr. Jäger and her team. I was also very lucky to attend an excellent and inspiring talk given by Dr. Nora Hollenstein at the Department of Computational Linguistics. And finally, walking the streets of Zürich after a busy day in early summer and watching the distant mountain peaks, still covered in snow, over Lake Zürich felt like a fairytale come true.

Eva Pavlinušić Vilus Postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Psycholinguistic Research, University of Zagreb