Dr I.L. Lammertink (Imme)

The core of Imme's research is to understand why children differ in the ease with which they acquire language, and what these differences tell us about fundamental aspects of language acquisition. Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) take an important place in her research. Children with DLD have so much difficulty acquiring language that is has a negative impact on their quality of life.

Imme has a multidisciplinary background and network: she obtained her BA Dutch Linguistics and Culture and Msc Cognitive Neuroscience (research master) at Radboud University. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on Statistical learning in children with DLD at the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation was awarded with the AVT/Anéla dissertation prize 2020. After that, she worked two years as a senior research at Dutch Kentalis. In 2022 she combined her work at Kentalis with a post-doc at the University of Amsterdam. This position was funded by an ABC Talent Grant that Imme received. In 2022 she received a prestigious Veni-grant (NWO) for her project "stats and structure: their presence and role in the peer language environment of children with DLD".

In her work Imme prioritises replicability and data transparency. For the majority of her studies the data, analyses scrips and materials are open available. Imme also really enjoys outreach activities. She has written blog posts for Wetenschap.nu, gives lectures about DLD and linguistics at high schools and primary schools and participated in Science Battles (science in theatre). Furthermore, together with Wouter Goudswaard, she translated her dissertation into a comic: "Het grote TOS-Mysterie: wat aliens and robots on leren over taal"). With this comic she hopes to raise awareness for DLD among primary school aged children and to make these children enthusiastic about language research!

• First Language Acquisition