Efthymia Kapnoula

Research

Associate Group Leader - Ikerbasque Research Fellow 2021-2026. Ramón y Cajal Fellow 2024-2028.

Keywords: spoken language processing, mental lexicon, word learning, word recognition, speech perception, phoneme categorization, language learning, language plasticity, individual differences.

Dr. Efthymia Kapnoula is an Ikerbasque Research Fellow and Associate Leader of the Spoken Language group.

Dr. Kapnoula's research examines how humans perceive and learn language, focusing on speech perception, phoneme categorization, word recognition, and word learning. The theoretical framework of her work postulates that language is a dynamic and malleable system and that systematic patterns of linguistic experience can shape the underlying processing system. Within this framework, she asks questions related to how humans process language in real time, how we learn language, and how experience changes the way we process linguistic input. To address these questions, she uses a range of methodological tools including experimental behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological (EEG) paradigms.

Dr. Kapnoula holds a BA in Psychology and a MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Athens (Greece). She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Iowa (USA) in 2016. She has been awarded several competitive fellowships and grants to support her research including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (European Commission), an Ikerbasque Research Fellowship (Basque Foundation for Science), and a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation). In addition, her work has been formally acknowledged by her previous institution (D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize for best dissertation in Social Sciences, University of Iowa), and more broadly in the field of cognitive psychology (ESCoP Early Career Publication Award, European Society for Cognitive Psychology).

Research group: Spoken Language

e.kapnoula@bcbl.eu

+34 943 309 300 Ext.: 224