Naomi Havron

 am a post-doctoral researcher working under the supervision of Anne Christophe at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris – France.

I am interested in topics related to language acquisition and development. I focus particularly on identifying the mechanisms that young children can use to learn the syntax of their native language and to develop their vocabulary. I study syntactic adaptation, which is a possible mechanism behind children's remarkable ability to learn the syntax and lexicon of their native language. I am also interested in differences between children and adults in the way they process and learn languages; and have recently started a project that looks at the effect of infants' environment on their languages development, and specifically at the size of their family.

Most of my research uses behavioral experimental methods such as eye-tracking to study young children. But I also use day-long recordings and corpus studies to study language development and the effect of children's input on their abilities.

This year I am co-teaching Language Acquisition and Processing (LC1) in the CogMaster program, and a mini-workshop on Liner Mixed Effects Models Using R.

2013- 2016      PhD student in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, department of psychology.

Supervisors: Inbal Arnon and Ram Frost.

Dissertation: the effect of literacy on language learning and processing

2010-2012       Tel Aviv University, master's degree in philosophy, summa cum laude.

Supervisor: Anat Matar

MA dissertation: The philosophical basis of Tomasello’s usage-based language acquisition theory in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

2005-2008       Haifa University, BA in psychology and the Ofakim honors program, summa cum laude.

BA dissertation: On the role of change and empathy in the nature of language.

2017-2018       The Victor Smorgon Charitable Fund post-doctoral fellowship for outstanding women ($20,000).

2016-2017       Social Science and Humanities post-doctoral fellowship from the Academic and Scientific Cooperation Office of the French Embassy in Israel (€22,500).

2016-2017       The Victor Smorgon Charitable Fund post-doctoral fellowship for outstanding women ($20,000).

2016                Union of academic Women in Israel PhD scholarship.

2016                Competitive travel scholarship from the faculty of social science at the Hebrew University to present my work in two conferences in the UK in summer of 2016 (declined).

2009                Prize from Bar-Illan University for the paper The linguistic difference in the philosophy of De Saussure and Derrida.

2005-2008       Excellence scholarship from the Ofakim honors program, university of Haifa. The scholarship covered the cost of tuition for three years.

Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (under revision). Starting big: The effect of unit-size on language learning in children and adults. Language Learning and Development.

Havron, N., de Carvalho, A., Fievet, A. C. & Christophe, A. (submitted). Predictive coding and novel word learning in 3-4 years old children. Psychological Science.

Havron, N., Scaff, C., Linzen, T. & Christophe, A. (2017). Cumulative Syntactic Priming in Comprehension in Children and Adults. The 42nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, USA.

Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (2017). Literacy as a source of variation in language processing and acquisition. Talk presented at Many Paths to Language, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Havron, N. & Leibovits, I. (2016). Language and body: Linguistic knowledge neutralizes automatic valence evaluations. Talk presented at 6th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Bangor, UK.

Johnson, T., Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (2016) Frequent frames in CDS as training wheels for acquisition of the verb paradigm in Hebrew. Talk presented at 2nd Usage-Based Linguistics Conference, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (2015). The effect of literacy on spoken language processing in children learning to read. Talk presented at the 9th conference of Literacy and Language, Tel Aviv, Israel

Havron, N., & Arnon, I. (2014). The effect of literacy on spoken language processing. Talk presented at the 20th conference of Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing, Edinburgh, UK.

Havron, N., & Arnon, I. (2014). The effect of literacy on spoken language processing. Talk presented at the 19th Cognitive Science Association for Interdisciplinary Learning, Hood River, USA.

Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (2014). The effect of literacy on spoken language processing: a before-after comparison of adult illiterates learning to read. Talk presented at the 8th conference of Literacy and Language, Haifa, Israel

Havron, N. & Arnon, I. (2013). The effect of literacy on spoken language processing. Talk presented at the 7th conference of Literacy and Language, Kiryat Ono, Israel

Anne Christophe (École Normale Supérieure), Alex de Carvalho (École Normale Supérieure) & Axel Barault (École Normale Supérieure): Predictive coding and novel word learning in 3-4 years old children.

Anne Christophe (École Normale Supérieure), & Alex de Carvalho (École Normale Supérieure): two year olds use syntactic distribution to infer the meaning of verb-noun homophones.

Jean-Remy Hochmann (Université Lyon 1) & Anne Christophe (École Normale Supérieure) : Syntactic adaptation in 18 months old infants using pupillometry

Tal Linzen (John Hopkins University), Camila Scaff (École Normale Supérieure) & Anne Christophe (École Normale Supérieure): Cumulative priming in comprehension in children and adults

Alejandrina Cristia (École Normale Supérieure): Language exposure and acquisition, a study with extremely large families in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities.

Mireille Babineau (École Normale Supérieure) & Anne Christophe (École Normale Supérieure) : Syntactic adaptation in 16 months old infants using habituation