Dr. Kateřina Chládková, M.A.

Institute of Psychology
The Czech Academy of Sciences
Pod Vodárenskou věží 1143/4, 182 00 Prague 8
Phone: +420 266 053 851
E-mail: chladkova@praha.psu.cas.cz

I work on the cognitive processing of speech and language with focus on speech sound learning and category formation in adults and infants. I am interested in all areas of laboratory phonology and phonetics in general. My current projects aim to describe the development al trajectory of various types of vowel contrasts in Czech-learning infants, assessing the effects of pre-natal exposure in newborns and the effects of talker accent on speech sound learning in older infants. I use behavioural (e.g. looking paradigms), neurophysiological (ERPs) and computational methods (neural networks).

Our research features in a video on baby language, morning TV show and news report on native and second language speech learning.

Contact: chladkova at praha.psu.cas.cz

Full CV here.

Education

2014 – Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities, PhD
2009 – Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities, MA in General linguistics
2008 – Palacky University in Olomouc, Faculty of Arts, BA in English and Dutch philology

Employment

since 2018 researcher – Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences
since 2018 assistant professor – Faculty of Arts, Charles University
2016 – 2018 post-doc – Institute of Psychology, Universität Leipzig (Germany)
2018 – 2021 guest researcher – MEG group, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
2014 – 2021 guest researcher – Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, Universiteit van Amsterdam
2013 – 2014 post-doc – Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, Universiteit van Amsterdam
2009 – 2013 PhD candidate – Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Funding

2021 – 2023: Learning to recognize words: a developmental cross-dialectal perspective (PI, CSF)
2021 – 2023: Diagnostic tool for assessment of communicative development in Czech children from 8 to 30 months (co-investigator, TACR)
2018 – 2020: Acquiring a quantity language: infants' input and perceptual processing of vowel length (PI, from Charles University)
2018 – 2020: The effect of talker accent on speech sound acquisition (PI, from Czech Science Foundation GACR)
2016 – 2018: Piecing auditory cues together: how we learn to integrate cues in speech perception (post-doctoral individual fellowship Rubicon, from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO)
2014: Endeavour Research Fellowship from the Australian government, for a 6-month research period - not realized due to family commitments

ORCID iD

Journal articles

Urbanec, J., Kremláček, J., Skálová, S., & Chládková, K. (submitted). Neurophysiological assessment of newborns´ auditory perception and its relevance for studying cognitive development.
Chládková, K., Urbanec, J., Skálová, S., & Kremláček, J. (under review). Newborns´ left-lateralized and asymmetrical neural processing of native vowels explained by prenetal onset of speech sound acqusition.
Chládková, K., Nuďga, N. & Boersma, P. (under review). A model of prenatal acqusition of vowels.
Chládková, K. & Paillereau, N. (in press). The what and when of universal perception: A review of early speech sound acquisition. To appear in Language Learning.
Chládková, K., Paillereau, N., & Šimáčková, Š. (2020). Acquiring segmental and suprasegmental phonology of vowel length: development across the first year of life. In L. Taschenberger (Ed.) Book of Abstracts: 2nd Workshop on Speech Perception and Production across the Lifespan, Zenodo, pp. 56-58.

Chládková, K. (2019). Jazyk nemluvňat - výzkum osvojování hlásek mateřského jazyka. Studies in Applied Linguistics 10 (1), 112–117.
Paillereau, N. & Chládková, K. (2019). Spectral and temporal characteristics of Czech vowels in spontaneous speech. Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Philologica 2/2019, Phonetica Pragensia.
Podlipský, V.J., Chládková, K., & Šimáčková, Š. (2019). Spectrum as a perceptual cue to vowel length in Czech, a quantity language. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146, EL352.
Tuninetti, A., Chládková, K., Peter, V., Schiller, N.O., & Escudero, P. (2017). When speaker identity is unavoidable: Neural processing of speaker identity cues in natural speech. Brain and Language,174: 42-49. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2017.07.001
Mulak, K., Bonn, C.D., Chládková, K., Aslin, R.N., & Escudero, P. (2017). Indexical and linguistic processing by 12-month olds: Discrimination of speaker, accent and vowel differences. PLoS One. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176762
Chládková, K., Podlipský, V.J., & Chionidou, A. (2017). Perceptual adaptation of vowels generalizes across the phonology and doesn’t require local context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43, 414–427. doi: https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/xhp0000333
Kriengwatana, B., Terry, J., Chládková, K., & Escudero, P. (2016). Speaker and accent variation are handled differently: Evidence in native and non-native listeners. PLoS One. 11(6): e0156870. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156870
Chládková, K., Hamann, S., Williams, D., & Hellmuth, S. (2016). F2 slope as a perceptual cue for the front-back contrast in Standard Southern British English. Language and Speech, 1–22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830916650991
Chládková, K., Escudero, P., & Lipski, S. (2015). When “AA” is long but “A” is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:438. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00438
Chládková, K., Escudero, P., & Lipski, S. (2013). Pre-attentive sensitivity to vowel duration reveals native phonology and predicts learning of second-language sounds. Brain and Language, 126: 243-252. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2013.05.020
Boersma, P., & Chládková, K. (2013). Detecting categorical perception in continuous discrimination data. Speech Communication, 55: 33-39. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2012.05.003
Šimáčková, Š., Podlipský, V.J., & Chládková, K. (2012). Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 42: 225-232. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100312000102
Chládková, K., & Escudero, P. (2012). Comparing vowel perception and production in Spanish and Portuguese: European versus Latin American dialects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131: EL119-EL125. https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3674991
Chládková, K., & Podlipský, V.J. (2011). Native dialect matters: Perceptual assimilation of Dutch vowels by Czech listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130: EL186-EL192. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3629135
Chládková, K., Escudero, P., & Boersma, P. (2011). Context-specific acoustic differences between Peruvian and Iberian Spanish vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130: 416-428. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3592242
Escudero, P., & Chládková, K. (2010). Spanish listeners’ perception of American and Southern British English vowels: Different initial stages for L2 development. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128: EL254-EL260. https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3488794

Peer-reviewed conference papers

Chládková, K., Boersma, P. Benders, T. (2015). The perceptual basis of the feature vowel height. Proceedings of ICPhS XVIII 2015, Glasgow, article 711.
Dadwani, R., Peter, V., Chládková, K., Geambașu, A., Escudero, P. (2015). Adult listeners’ processing of indexical versus linguistic differences in a pre-attentive discrimination paradigm. Proceedings of ICPhS XVIII 2015, Glasgow, article 829.
Podlipský, V.J, Šimáčková, Š., & Chládková, K. (2013). Imitation interacts with one’s second-language phonology but it does not operate cross-linguistically. Proceedings of Interspeech 2013, Lyon, France.
Chládková, K., & Hamann, S. (2011). High vowels in Standard British English: /u/-fronting does not result in merger. Proceedings of ICPhS XVII 2011, Hong Kong, pp 476-479.
ter Schure, S., Chládková, K., & van Leussen, J.-W. (2011). Comparing identification of artificial and natural vowels. Proceedings of ICPhS XVII 2011, Hong Kong, pp 1770-1773.
Boersma, P., & Chládková, K. (2011). Asymmetries between speech perception and production reveal phonological structure. Proceedings of ICPhS XVII 2011, Hong Kong, pp 328-331.
Boersma, P., & Chládková, K. (2010). Detecting categorical perception in continuous discrimination data. Proceedings of Interspeech 2010. Chiba, Japan.
Chládková, K., Boersma, P., & Podlipský, V.J. (2009). On-line formant shifting as a function of F0. Proceedings of Interspeech 2009. Brighton, UK.

Invited talks

2019: Born with their mother tongue? Language and speech acquisition in the fetus and the newborn, Winter school on Cognitive psychology, Malá Skála
2017: Osvojování si hlásek a porozumění řeči: za vším hledej distribuce [Speech sound acqusition and speech comprehension: distributional learning and adaptation], Centrum pro studium člověka a společnosti, Filozofická fakulta, Univerzita Karlova
2013: Tracing phonological vowel length across languages through pre-attentive auditory responses to vowel duration differences: an ERP study, Language and Cognition Group, Universiteit Leiden
2011: Investigating the perceptual basis of phonological features, Phonology Seminar, University of California Los Angeles
2011: Perception of speech sound structure, Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci