NWO Open Competition Grants for Helen de Hoop, Helmer Strik and Catia Cucchiarini
Four research projects from Radboud University receive a NWO Open Competion grant from the NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities. Each proposal could have a maximum budget of 750,000 euros. Within the Faculty of Arts, project applications from Helen de Hoop, Helmer Strik and Catia Cucchiarini have been accepted.
This instrument makes funding available for the best research proposals in the humanities and social sciences, without any thematic limitations. Forty one project proposals were eventually awarded funding. The aim of the Open Competition is to facilitate excellent, non-programmed, curiosity-driven research that primarily addresses a social sciences or humanities research question and research problem.
Advanced speech technology and learning analytics for personalized reading education
Catia Cucchiarini, linguist, & Helmer Strik, linguist. Together with Bernard Veldkamp (University of Twente).
Adapting automatic speech recognition of Dutch child speech for speech and reading diagnostics and combining it with learning analytics, provides scientific insights into reading development, early detection of reading problems and subsequent personalization of reading instruction to meet the needs of individual children and support them even better.
What does it do to you? The impact of using informal or polite pronouns of address across languages
Helen de Hoop, Professor of Theoretical Linguistics.
In languages such as Dutch, German, French and Spanish, speakers have a choice between using either a polite or an informal pronoun when addressing others. This research investigates the effect of using either pronoun on the addressee. Experiments will be conducted across languages, situations, genders, and age groups.
Control mechanisms of social-emotional regulation
Ivan Toni, Professor of Motor Cognition & Karin Roelofs, Professor of Experimental Psychopathology.
Emotion regulation is necessary for participating in human society, as evidenced by the isolation often encountered by people suffering from social-anxiety disorder. This project tests the hypothesis that social-emotional regulation is an action selection problem, and uses that knowledge to enhance the efficacy of clinical interventions in social anxiety patients.
High-resolution brain scans for understanding cognitive enhancing brain pills
Roshan Cools, Professor of Cognitive neuropsychiatry & David Norris, Professor of MR Techniques in Brain Function.
Our environment changes constantly. Brain dopamine is essential for flexible, goal-directed behaviour. Consider the cognitive enhancing effects of smart drugs that increase dopamine. How does dopamine alter brain function? New high-resolution MRI scans will unravel how common dopamine pills alter communication between brain areas to enhance cognition and behaviour.