Dr Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez

PhD

Reader in Psychology

School of Psychology, Social Work and Public Health

Role

Areas of expertise

  • Early Language Development
  • Phonology
  • Lexical Development
  • Bilingualism
  • Early Cognitive Development

Teaching and supervision

Courses

Modules taught

Undergraduate

  • Introduction to Key areas of Psychology
  • Academic Skills for Psychology 
  • Memory & Language
  • Clinical Neuropsychology
  • Psychology Project

Postgraduate

  • Brain and Cognition 
  • Research Dissertation 
  • Cognitive and Social Aspects of Development 

Supervision

Previous supervision

  • Dr Sam Bond (completed September 2023). A Detailed Exploration Into the Constraints on Statistical Learning.

Research Students

Name Thesis title Completed
Sam Bond A Detailed Exploration into the Constraints on Statistical Learning Active
Shannon Gibson Development of Word Learning Heuristics in Monolingual and Bilingual Infants Active

Research

I am a member of the Brookes Babylab. My research focuses on understanding the roots of language acquisition, by exploring speech perception in infancy. I’m interested in infants’ capacity to learn phonological properties that occur in their native language, the mechanisms by which these native properties are acquired, and how prior knowledge about these properties supports later lexical acquisition, such as word segmentation and early word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants. I am also very interested in investigating the effect that environmental and maturational factors such as preterm birth, socioeconomic status or a pandemic have on early language acquisition.

Examples of Research Projects:

  • Mutual exclusivity in monolingual and bilingual infants.
  • Phonological development in monolingual and bilingual infants.
  • Constraints on statistical learning.
  • Abstract word acquisition.
  • The effects of social distancing policies on children’s language development, sleep and executive functions
  • Early language acquisition in preterm infants and infants from lower-SES families.
  • Linking early phonological development and lexical acquisition. 
  • Creation of an inventory of phonemic and syllabic frequencies in Spanish.

More details about these projects can be found on the BabyLab webpages.

I am always interested in new collaborations and in supervising students with an interest in any of the areas detailed above. Please do get in touch.

Centres and institutes

Groups

Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution

  • BICYCLE (Born In Covid Year Core Lockdown Effects) (01/01/2024 - 31/12/2026), funded by: Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), funding amount received by Brookes: £11,431

Publications

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