News
- Sarah Kapp with contribution at Phonetics Day 2026 in AmsterdamSarah Kapp will present research from her doctoral project at the Dag van de Fonetiek (Phonetics Day) in Amsterdam on 6 November 2026. The annual meeting brings together researchers in phonetics and speech science to discuss current empirical research and methodological developments. We look forward to the exchange!
- New publication on LLMs and language norm authoritiesA new paper by Vít Dovalil and Adriana Hanulíková has been published in Frontiers in Language Sciences: “Language management in the age of LLMs: AI tools in proofreading as emerging norm authorities?” The paper critically examines the growing role of Large Language Models in proofreading and asks to what extent they are becoming new authorities for language norms.
- Knowledge transfer on social robotics at “Türen auf mit der Maus”As part of “Türen auf mit der Maus” 2026, a nationwide initiative by WDR (West German Broadcasting), the SMARTcognition Lab collaborated with CNRS on an interactive activity exploring social robotics and embodied AI. Children had the opportunity to encounter a social robot and gain experience interacting with them. Building on these experiences, they reflected on the design and capabilities of… Read more: Knowledge transfer on social robotics at “Türen auf mit der Maus”
- Contribution at EMNLP 2026Our paper “Speaker gaze and disfluencies during storytelling toward a robot or a human: The role of partner type and temperamental shyness” by Nils Tolksdorf and Adriana Hanulíková has been accepted for the workshop “Multimodal Interaction in Face-to-Face Dialogue (MINT)” at the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). The paper examines gaze behavior and pausing during storytelling to… Read more: Contribution at EMNLP 2026
- Expanding Our AI Research InfrastructureThe SMARTcognition Lab has received as part of the Excellence Initiative to support the development of a powerful GPU-based AI workstation. The new infrastructure will facilitate local processing of speech and multimodal data, as well as the use of AI models in human–robot interaction research. This will expand our technical capabilities for upcoming research projects.
Research at the SMARTcognition Lab
The SMARTcognition Lab at the Institute of German as a Foreign Language Philology (IDF) encompasses the Eyetracking Lab (HULC Lab) and the SMART Lab. Together, we investigate how people perceive, learn, use, and evaluate language — taking into account social, regional, and linguistic variation, interactions with robots and AI, and a range of contextual conditions. Our work focuses on the cognitive processes involved, individual differences, and the influence of social networks.
Research Areas
01
Speech Perception in Diverse Contexts
We investigate how people perceive and evaluate spoken language across social, regional, and linguistic variation. Our focus includes monolingual and bilingual individuals as well as the processing of regional and foreign-language accents. We also examine how familiarity, cognitive demands, and social attributions shape speech perception.
02
Robots as Social Learning Partners
We explore how social robots can support learning processes as interactive partners, foster language development, and help investigate cognitive processes under controlled conditions. Our work also addresses ethical and child-centered aspects of human–robot interaction.
03
Individual Differences and Temperament
We examine how individual behavior and language abilities influence children’s learning processes in social interactions. We investigate how communication behavior and learning strategies change when children interact with familiar or unfamiliar partners, or when the learning context shifts.
04
Linguistic Variation and Social Networks
We study the characteristics and dynamics of an individual’s social networks in relation to their linguistic and communicative development, based on the perspective that language is acquired through social relationships and interaction.
Current Projects
P1
ECHO
Ethics in Child–Robot Interaction: Investigating and Co-Designing Role Configurations in Educational Settings
Social robots are increasingly being deployed in educational contexts — particularly with children as a vulnerable group. The ECHO project examines the ethical implications of social role configurations (e.g., learning partner, teacher, learner) and co-designs guidelines for responsible, human-centered AI applications in education.
P2
SoLEARN
SoLEARN – 4EU+ European University Alliance
As part of the 4EU+ European University Alliance, SoLEARN investigates linguistic and social learning in European educational contexts. The project connects partner universities and builds a shared research infrastructure for multilingual learning.
P3
Lectal Coherence
Lectal Coherence: Empirical and methodological cross-disciplinary perspectives
This project seeks to clarify the dynamic balance between lectal coherence, linguistic variability, and language change: while the former is essential for structural integrity and social orientation, the latter two enable adaptation and differentiation. To this end, a group of researchers from diverse disciplines and universities, specialising in various fields of linguistics, have collaborated to address this issue. The researchers involved in this project hail from a diverse range of academic backgrounds, including but not limited to the fields of computational linguistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence research, quantitative linguistics, phonetics and speech processing, psycholinguistics, contact linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.
Current publications
2026
Experience and personality modulate pupillary responses during real-time processing of within-language accent shifts
Hanulíková, A., Gastman, F., & Schimke, S. – Scientific Reports
Speech perception Accent Cognition2026
Robot speech: How variability matters for child–robot interactions
Hanulíková, A., Tolksdorf, N. F., & Kapp, S. – Frontiers in Robotics and AI
HRI Speech Children2026
The relation between children’s shyness and their contingent dialogical actions when reacting to a social robot’s instructions
Tykhonenko, V., Tolksdorf, N. F., & Rohlfing, K. J. — Philosophical Transactions B
HRI Children Shyness2025
Grammatical gender in Slovak word production: An event-related potential study
Stolle, S. I., Hanulíková, A., & Schiller, N. O. — Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
Grammatik EEG CognitionTeam
The SMARTcognition Lab team brings together researchers, doctoral candidates, and student assistants in joint research projects and in teaching.
Contact
Get in touch
Whether you are interested in our research, would like to explore a collaboration, or wish to participate in a study, we would be happy to hear from you.
Address
Institute of German as a Foreign Language Philology
Heidelberg University
Plöck 55
69117 Heidelberg