Award for researching how bilingual children observe faces

Mathilde Fort, post-doctoral researcher of the Research Group in Acquisition and Perception of Speech of the Research Centre in Cognition and Brain of the Pompeu Fabra University, has win the 8^th edition of the Christian Benoît Award, organised by the International Speech Communication Association, the Association Francophone de la Communication Parlee and the GIPSA-lab.

The prize will be used to carry out the project Infant learning from the Eyes and the Mouth of a talking face (InfEyMo), which will investigate how early bilingualism has effects on the way children explore people’s faces while speaking, and studies how they learn through their movements.

To solve these unanswered questions, Fort will carry out different studies of visual tracking, comparing children who live in monolingual environments to those who live in bilingual environments, informs the UPF in a press note.

The award, of 7,500 euros, is given every two years to young promising scientists in the speech area and personal communication, and it is destined to develop basic research projects as well as applied research projects. Fort will receive the award in the Interspeech 2015 Conference, which will take place from 6 to 10 September in Dresden (Germany).