Prof. A.P.A. Roelofs (Ardi)
Principal Investigator - Donders Centre for Cognition
Principal Investigator - Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour
Professor - Psycholinguïstics
Thomas van Aquinostraat 4
6525 GD NIJMEGEN
Postbus 9104
6500 HE NIJMEGEN
Language does not operate in isolation but interacts with other cognitive abilities, including perception, action, memory, and attention. My research group seeks to understand the relations among language, attention, and the brain. We study language and attention in healthy (mostly unbalanced-bilingual) adult individuals as well as in typically developing children and children with language impairments, and in adults with aphasia due to stroke or neurodegenerative disease. Our goal is not only to better theoretically understand the relationship between language and other cognitive abilities, i.e., attention, but also to contribute to the improvement of the diagnosis and treatment of language deficits in children with developmental language disorder and adults with aphasia.
In our research, we have adopted a multi-method approach that includes measurements of response time and accuracy, eye tracking, electrophysiological (EEG, MEG) and hemodynamic (fMRI) neuroimaging, tractography, imaging genetics, and computational modeling. Our research is driven by, and aims to further develop, the WEAVER++ computational model of attention and language performance and its neurocognitive extension called WEAVER++/ARC, which synthesizes behavioral psycholinguistic, functional neuroimaging, tractography, and aphasiological evidence.