During my time as a PhD student, I investigated the neural mechanisms underlying selective auditory attention and its deflections in the EEG. Like many other researchers in the field, I applied high-quality speech stimuli, such as audiobooks to study how continuous speech is encoded and processed in the brain. My aim was to use an ecologically valid test material to increase the generalizability of research findings to natural speech in everyday life. However, this is not realistic speech! The texts of audiobooks are professionally crafted and narrated by professional actors. The speech material is completely free of errors, without hesitations, repetitions, long pauses, or other disruptions.
 
In everyday situations such as conversations or live-lectures, speech is much less polished. Formulating thoughts ‘on the fly’ comes with numerous speech disfluencies represented in long pauses between and within a sentence, repetition of words and syllables, non-lexical fillers (e.g. Äh, Mh) and corrections of mispronunciations. All these disfluencies lead to fluctuations in listeners engagement and likely influence how natural speech is processed in the brain.  As a postdoctoral researcher, I use state-of-the-art techniques to investigate the neural speech tracking to realistic speech features with the aim to advance our understanding of how the brain deals with real-life spoken language. The project is funded by the DFG (project number: 490839860).

Since 2022

Post-doc, Neurophysiology of everyday life group, University of Oldenburg, Germany.
 
2013-2021

Ph.D. student at the Neuropsychology Lab, University of Oldenburg, Germany.
 
2010-2013

M.Sc. Hearing Technology and Audiology, University of Oldenburg, Germany.
 
2006-2010

B.Eng. Hearing Technology and Audiology, Jade University Oldenburg, Germany.