Titia Benders
Radboud University Nijmegen (RU)
Center for Language Studies (CLS)
titia.benders@let.ru.nl
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/titia
Phone: (+31) (0)24 – 361 16133
Visit: room 7.11, Erasmusgebouw, Erasmusplein 1, Nijmegen
Post: Postbus 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Last updated: 21 november 2012
Personal
Born November 26, 1984, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Dutch Citizenship.
Education
Sep 2008 – Oct 2012. PhD in Linguistics — completed. University of Amsterdam (UvA).
• Title: Nature’s distributional-learning experiment: infants’ input, infants’
perception, and computational modeling
• Supervisors: Paul Boersma, Paola Escudero, Dorothy Mandell
Sep 2006 – Oct 2008. M.A. in Linguistics — cum laude. UvA.
• Thesis: Fifteen-month-old infants sensitivity to first and second formant
in novel words
• Supervisors: Suzanne Curtin, Paola Escudero
Sep 2003 – Jun 2006. B.A. in Linguistics — cum laude. UvA.
• Thesis: Actie! Over de betekenis en verwerving van de grammaticale categorie Werkwoord (Action! On the meaning and acquisition of the grammatical category verb)
• Supervisor: Remko Scha
Research
Experience
Oct 2012 – Present. Postdoc researcher First-Language Acquisition with Paula
Fikkert.
Oct 2008 – Oct 2012. PhD project Unsupervised learning of cue weighting in
phoneme perception: human and computer learners.
Mar 2008 – 2011. Collaborator on the project A longitudinal study of how
vowel sounds can either facilitate or impede the acquisition of a third language
by immigrant communities. PI: Paola Escudero
Jan 2008 – Present. MA project Infants representation and processing of phonetic detail for novel words: Do different phonetic cues to vowel contrasts behave
differently? Collaborators: Suzanne Curtin, Paola Escudero & Daniel Swingley.
Oct 2006 – Apr 2007. Research assistant to the projects Language–specific
cue weighting (PI: Silvia Lipski, Universität Konstanz, and Paola Escudero);
A longitudinal study of how vowel sounds can either facilitate or impede the
acquisition of a third language by immigrant communities (PI: Paola Escudero);
and Modelling L2 speech perception (PI: Paola Escudero).
Teaching
Sep 2009 – Oct 2011. Main lecturer of the BA-course Spraak (introduction to
phonetics, BA Linguistics, UvA).
Oct 2011. Guest lectures Language Development. (MA-course Cognition, Language and Communication, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, UvA; BA-course Cognitieve Ontwikkeling, Psychology, UvA).
Mar 2009 – Feb 2012. Guest lectures Speech perception and production in the
first year of life. (BA-course Taal– en spraakontwikkeling, Linguistics, UvA).
Mar 2009 – Apr 2009. Guest lectures Syntax and Phonetics. (BA–course
Inleiding Taalwetenschap, Linguistics, UvA).
Sep 2007. Guest lectures Phonetic & phonological detail in infant word recognition and Poverty of the stimulus? Exaggeration of phonetic information and
speech perception skills. (MA–course Language and Speech Development, General Linguistics, UvA).
Supervision and Daily advisor of PhD-student Antje Stöhr (Radboud University Nijmegen).
Advising
Supervisor of student assistants Jael Bootsma (experiments), and Marieke van
den Heuvel, Gisela Govaart, and Maartje van der Hoeve (annotating corpus)
(University of Amsterdam).
Second advisor for MA-theses Adi Ben-Arieh and Andreea Geambascu (University of Amsterdam).
Grants, Awards, Dec 2011. Gratuity (e1000,–) by the institute Language and Literary studies
& Scholarships for recognition of teaching and further development of the course Spraak.
Dec 2011. Nominated for the “University–of–Amsterdam best teacher award”
by the student board in Linguistics.
Oct 2011. Awarded the “Best presentation Award” at the ACLC NAP-dag.
May 2005. NWO Toptalent grant (e180,000) for my PhD-project: Unsupervised learning of cue weighting in phoneme perception: human and computer
learners.
2008. For 6-month stay in North America:
• Stunt grant, University of Amsterdam
• AUV travel grant, Alumni board of the University of Amsterdam
• Grant for studying abroad, Schuurman Schimmel-van Outeren Stichting
• Study grant, Stichting Fundatie van de Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude
• Study grant, Hendrik Mullers Vaderlandsch Fonds
Peer Reviewed Lipski, S., Escudero, P., & Benders, T. (2012). Language experience moduPapers
lates weighting of acoustic cues for vowel perception: an event-related potential
study. Psychophysiology, 49, 638–650
Benders, T., Escudero, P., & Sjerps, M. J. (2012). The interrelation between
acoustic context effects and available response categories in speech sound categorization. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131:4, 3079–3087.
Escudero, P., Benders, T., & Wanrooij, K. (2011) Enhanced vowel distributions facilitate adult L2 learning. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
130:4, EL206–EL212.
Benders, T. & Escudero, P. (2010). The interrelation between the stimulus
range and the number of response categories in vowel categorization. Proceedings of Interspeech 2010, Makuhari, 27–30 Sep 2010.
Escudero, P. & Benders, T. (2010). Phonetic and phonological approaches
to early word recognition: Empirical findings, methodological issues and theoretical implications. In: Everaert, M., Lentz, T., de Mulder, H., Nilsen, O.,
& Zondervan A. (eds.) The Linguistic Enterprise: Psychological Reality and
Theoretical Validity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Escudero, P., Benders, T., & Lipski, S. (2009). Native, non–native and L2
perceptual cue weighting for Dutch vowels: The case of Dutch, German, and
Spanish listeners. Journal of Phonetics, 37:4, 452–465.
Benders, T. & Boersma, P. (2009). Comparing methods to find a best exemplar in a multidimensional space. Proceedings of Interspeech 2009, Brighton,
6–10 Sep 2009.
Projects In
Progress
Benders, T. & Mandell, D.J. (Under review). Dutch infants’ sensitivity to
the combination of vowel quality and duration in a speech-sound categorization
paradigm.
Benders, T. (Under review). Learning vowels from multiple auditory cues:
Dutch infants; language input and perception.
Benders, T. (Under review). Dutch mothers’ enhancement of affect rather
than phonetic contrast in infant–directed speech.
Benders, T. & Boersma, P. (Writing in progress). Learning from multiple
acoustic cues for phoneme acquisition: Infants’ perception, language input and
neural network simulations.
Benders, T., Curtin, S., Escudero, P., & Swingley, D. (Writing in progress).
Infants’ representation and processing of phonetic detail for novel words: Do
different phonetic cues to vowel contrasts behave differently?
Benders, T. (In progress). Dutch fathers’ Infant–Directed Speech.
Benders, T. (In progress). Representing sociophonetic knowledge in the bidirectional model of phonetics and phonology.
Selected
Conference
Presentations
Benders, T. & Boersma, P. (2012, Jun). Learning from multiple acoustic cues
for phoneme acquisition: Dutch infants’ perception, language input, and neural
networks. International Child Phonology Conference, 4–6 June 2012, Minneapolis, USA.
Benders, T. (2012, Jan). Dutch infants’ discrimination of /A/ and /a:/: evidence for simultaneous learning of multiple cues. Old World Conference in
Phonology 9, 18–21 Jan 2012, Berlin, Germany.
Benders, T. (2011, Jun). Dutch infants’ discrimination of /A/ and /a:/: development into the second year of life. International Child Phonology Conference,
15–18 Jun 2011, York, UK.
Benders, T. & Mandell, D. J. (2011, Apr). The Integration of Acoustic Dimensions in Infants’ Phoneme Perception: Introducing and Testing a Paradigm.
Society for Research in Child Development, Biennieal Meeting, 31 Mar–2 Apr
2011, Montreal, Canada.
Benders, T. (2011, Jan). Representing sociophonetic knowledge in the bidirectional model of phonetics and phonology. Old World Conference in Phonology
8, 20–22 Jan 2011, Marrakech, Marrocco.
Benders, T., Escudero, P. & Sjerps, M. (2010, Nov). The interrelation between
the stimulus range and the number of response categories in vowel categorization. 2nd Pan–American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, 15–19 Nov 2010, Cancun, Mexico.
Benders, T., Curtin, S., Escudero, P., & Swingley, D. (2010, Mar). FifteenMonth-old Infants’ Sensitivity to Vowels’ First and Second Formant in Novel
Word Learning. Within the workshop: Signals and Representations: What Different Sound Contrasts Tell us About Phonological Development. International
Conference on Infant Studies, 11–13 Mar 2010, Baltimore, US.
Selected
National
Presentations
Benders, T. & Boersma, P. (2012, Mar). Learning from multiple acoustic cues
for phoneme acquisition: Dutch infants’ perception, language input, and neural
networks. Netwerk Eerste Taalverwerving, 9 Mar 2012, Amsterdam.
Benders, T. (2011, Dec). Een akoestische beschrijving van de hoekklinkers in
baby-gerichte spraak in het Nederlands. Dag van de Fonetiek, 15 Dec 2011,
Utrecht.
Selected
Post–MA
Education
Nov 2009 – Dec 2009. 3–day course Didactiek basiskwalificatie UvA–docent.
Centrum voor Nascholing Amsterdam.
Feb 2009 – Mar 2009. Course Speech Signal Processing (5 EC), General Linguistics, UvA.
Oct 2008 – Jan 2009. Courses Applied Continuous Multivariate Analysis (6
EC, grade: 10) and Programming skills: R (6 EC, grade: 9.5), Psychology,
UvA.
Oct 2008. NWO–Mediatraining, by Hakuna–Matata science & media.
International
Activities
Apr 2012 – present. Visiting Fellow at the MARCS Institute at the University
of Western Sydney.
Jan 2008 – Aug 2008. Writing masters thesis with Dr. Suzanne Curtin (University of Calgary), preceded by a one–week stay at Dr. Daniel Swingley’s Infant
Language Lab (University of Pennsylvania).
Mar 2006. Participant Leipzig Spring School on Linguistic Diversity.
Extra–
curricular
Academic
Activities
Sep 2010 – Present. Secretary of the Board of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor
Fonetische Wetenschappen (Dutch Association of Phonetic Sciences).
Jul 2009 – Present. Member of the Board of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor
Fonetische Wetenschappen (Dutch Association of Phonetic Sciences).
Dec 2009 – Mar 2012. Member Graduate Studies Committee, Faculty of Humanities, UvA
Oct 2008 – Apr 2010. Co-Organizer bi–weekly IFA lab meetings; IFA workshop;
NAP-dag; Workshop Using Eye Tracking in Linguistics and Cognitive Science;
and Workshop Using EEG in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, ACLC, UvA.
Sep 2004 – Dec 2007. Member Student board (Facultaire Studentenraad);
member Educational board Linguistics (Opleidingscommisie Taalwetenschap);
member project groups Academic Skills I (Academische Vaardigheden I) and
Research skills (Onderzoeksvaardigheden), Faculty of Humanities, UvA.
Valorisation
Dec 2012. Guest lecture about science and psycholinguistic research at the
Weekendschool Nijmegen, co-taught with Maarten Versteegh.
Nov 2012. Developer and presenter of hands-on experiment for MysteryX–
Science4Kids Nijmegen, with Paula Fikkert, Evelien Krikhaar, Sho Tsuji, and
Helen Buckler.
Nov 2012. Guest lecture about language-acquisition research at the Stedelijk
Gymnasium Nijmegen.
Jan 2011 – Dec 2011. Advisor for the development of the primary-school course
Toonhoogte (Pitch), including a guest-lecture at the primary school (Universitaire Pabo van Amsterdam, UvA).
General
Audience
Presentations
Publications
Sep 2012. Pioneers – sak, saak, sak, saak. Interview in Nwsbrf#151/09.2012,
Newsletter of the faculty of humanities at the University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2011. Over luisterende babys (On listening babies). Presentation within
the series “Geesteswetenschappen presenteert...” (The humanities present...),
in SPUI25.
Dec 2008. Popular article on MA–thesis research in newsletter of Werkverband
Amsterdamse Psycholinguı̈sten.
Sep 2008. Unsupervised learning of cue weighting in phoneme perception: human and computer learners. Presentation on Toptalent grants meeting, NWO.
Nov 2007. De liefde voor de wetenschap van Titia Benders. Interview in LustrumNieuws, a series in celebration of the 375th anniversary of the UvA.