Maya Hickmann

My past and ongoing research focuses on oral language use, acquisition, and pathology within a cross-linguistic and interdisciplinary perspective. Main questions include:
1) the relationship between structural and functional determinants of acquisition;
2) the autonomous or interactive nature of different components of language and cognition;
3) the relationship between language and cognition in light of linguistic diversity.

• Language, interaction, and cognition in child development
  • Pragmatics in child language: deixis, epistemic modality, speech acts, discourse cohesion.
  • Regulatory functions of language in interaction, egocentric speech.
• Children’s discourse organization
  • Cross-linguistic study of narrative productions in several domains of reference (person, space, time)
  • Relating coherence and cohesion in discourse.
  • Levels of cognitive control in discourse.
• Space, cognition and language in children
  • Typological constraints in language use and acquisition: cross-linguistic study of spatial language (spatial relations, motion) from emergence to adulthood.
  • Early comprehension of spatial markers and early categorization of spatial relations during the prelinguistic period (9-15 months).
  • Speech and co-verbal gestures in spatial representations.
  • The relationship between verbal and non-verbal spatial cognition.
• Bilingualism and second language acquisition
  • Comparative study of grammaticalization and lexicalization processes in language acquisition across several types of learners: child L1 acquisition, 2L1 acquisition in early bilinguals, adult L2 acquisition.
• Atypical development and pathologies of oral language
  • Discourse organization in children with language/learning disabilities.
  • Dissociations in aphasia from a cross-linguistic perspective (monolingual and bilingual aphasic speakers).
  • Acquisition of spatial language in children with motor deficits.
  • Spatial representations in children and adults with sensory deficits (deafness, blindness).