What is the topic of your PhD project and how does your work look like in practice?
My PhD project focuses on statistical learning in language. Statistical learning is a type of learning that happens without you trying – sometimes without you even knowing it. Your brain silently picks up patterns, and that shows up in your brain signals and also behavior, even if you can’t explicitly say what you’ve learned. Here is an example: imagine you don’t know any Dutch, but you hear this continuous stream of speech over and over: “ikdoeonderzoekzijdoetonderzoekikdoeonderzoekikdoeonderzoek”. After a while, you might start to notice that ik is often followed by doe, and doe by onderzoek. Gradually, you begin to segment the continuous sound into separate words – simply based on which sounds tend to stick together. This is thought to be one of the core mechanisms underlying language learning, and my work explores how this mechanism is implemented in the brain. In practice? I gently “torture” my Dutch participants by asking them to listen to audiobook in Chinese mandarin for an hour, and test whether they’ve unconsciously picked up on statistical regularities – using both behavioral measures and brain signal recorded with MEG.
What does the Donders Institute mean to you?
Coming from a remote and underprivileged village, I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have the opportunity to study and do research in such a word-class institute. But to me, Dondes is more than just a workplace. It is also a community – full of wonderful people with whom I’ve had so much fun working, chatting and simply sharing life.
Who inspires you the most and why?
I don’t really have a single person who inspires me the most – or perhaps, many people have inspired me in different ways. My mother taught me that kindness comes first. My father showed me what responsibility looks like, simply by living it. My friends have given me the quiet freedom to live my life on my own terms, without judgement. And my colleagues – through their genuine passion for what they do – have inspired me to keep asking myself what my own dreams truly are.
What is an important life lesson you have learned in the past?
Learning to love myself – and honestly, I’m still learning. I’ve always had too much self-criticism and too little self-appreciation. I often catch myself complaining: why can’t I achieve what others achieve, why do I fall behind, procrastinate, lack discipline? But here’s the thought I’m slowly learning to hold onto: I’ve actually done quite an amazing job, and that’s not arrogance but me beginning to see myself more clearly.