Skip to main content

Bilingual before language

Written by Communications EISB on . Posted in EISB Talks.

Dear Families:

We are pleased to invite you to the EISB TALK from next Thursday, March 25. On this occasion we will have the presence of Núria Sebastián, who will give a talk entitled “Bilinguals before language”, for our entire EISB community. Núria Sebastián is Professor of Psychology at Pompeu Fabra University and holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Barcelona. A pioneer in the research of bilingual learning in infants, she is currently developing her research as director of the Speech Acquisition and Perception Group (SAP) at the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He has also directed the UPF Doctoral School since July 2013.

We recommend you to participate in this presentation, which on this occasion will be in Spanish, to discover the scientific basis on which the functioning of the brain in bilingual babies and children is presented. The speaker will explain the relevance of exposing children to more than one language as early as possible and will also talk about the importance of a natural communication context with respect to language acquisition.

There will also be a time for questions and answers, both for scientific and practical issues. These consultations may be made in Spanish, Catalan or English.

We look forward to seeing you all via ZOOM next Thursday, March 25, from 7pm to 8pm. This is the link to request access: http://bit.ly/EISBtalksNuria

Thank you and best regards,

Lyn McBride

Infant Coordinator

European International School of Barcelona

____________________

**More about Núria Sebastián: she obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Barcelona. After a postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute and the CNRS. She has been a visiting researcher at several research centers such as the IRCS at the University of Pennsylvania, the ICN at University College London and the University of Chicago. Internationally recognized with the James S. McDonnell Foundation Award (Bridging Mind, Brain and Behavior program) in 2001 and gave the prestigious Nijmegen Lectures in 2005. In 2009 and 2014 he received the ICREA Academia award and in 2012 the Narcís Monturiol medal in recognition of his scientific contribution. In 2016, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of The British Academy, Britain’s leading national institution in the humanities and social sciences. She served as vice president of the European Research Council in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

She was the coordinator of the CONSOLIDER BRAINGLOT project (2007-2013), which investigates bilingualism and cognitive neuroscience and consists of six interdisciplinary research groups. One of Professor Núria Sebastián’s current projects is the ERC Advanced Grant project UnderControl, which investigates the relationship between attention and language development.

She is the author of more than 100 publications in international journals (including Science, PNAS, The Journal of Neuroscience, among others). She is currently an associate editor of Developmental Science (2005-) and Language Learning and Development (2013-). She is also editor of the Cognitive Neuroscience Series of Language Learning and a member of numerous editorial boards, including Bilingualism, Language and Cognition and Trends in Neuroscience and Education.