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Alex de Carvalho

Ph.D

Maître de conférences

Université Paris Cité

​Alex de Carvalho est Maître de Conférences en Psychologie du Développement à l’Université Paris Cité (Université Paris Descartes). Il a obtenu en 2017 le titre de Docteur en Sciences Cognitives à l’Ecole Normale Supérieur, sous la direction d’Anne Christophe. Alex a ensuite effectué un post-doctorat dans le département de psychologie de l’Université de Pennsylvanie (UPenn - USA), sous la direction du Pr. John Trueswell. Les recherches développées par Alex de Carvalho explorent de nombreuses facettes du développement du langage, sa compréhension, sa production et sa représentation, ainsi que leurs relations avec d’autres aspects non-linguistiques du développement cognitif et avec la compréhension de la lecture.

Parmi les questions au cœur de sa recherche, figurent :
Quels sont les mécanismes que les jeunes enfants utilisent pour apprendre le sens des mots ?
Comment les enfants (et les adultes) évaluent-ils les multiples interprétations pour un mot ambigu pendant le traitement des phrases ?
Quelles capacités cognitives soutiennent l’acquisition et le traitement du langage parlé ainsi que la capacité à lire ?
Dans quelle mesure la capacité d’un enfant à comprendre et à analyser mentalement les phrases à l’oral est-elle liée à sa capacité à lire ?

Dans ses travaux, Alex utilise une méthodologie de recherche multidisciplinaire, à la croisée de la psychologie du développement, des sciences de l’éducation, de la psycholinguistique, et des neurosciences cognitives. Il utilise diverses méthodes expérimentales pour étudier les mécanismes qui sous-tendent l’apprentissage et le traitement du langage de la petite enfance jusqu’à l’âge adulte (ex., suivi du regard (Eye-tracking) ; électroencéphalographie (EEG) ; tâches de production du langage, de compréhension en lecture, et d’évaluation des compétences de fonctions exécutives).

PUBLICATIONS

Kolberg, L. S., Babineau, M., Barbir, M., de Carvalho, A., & Christophe (in press). Prosody. Oxford Handbook of perceptual development.

Ip, M., de Carvalho, A., & Trueswell, J. (pre-registered report accepted pending data collection). "Now JOHNNY is blicking!": How children's interpretation of prosodic focus guides word learning and alternative processing. Developmental Science.

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Babineau, M., Barbir, M., De Carvalho, A., Havron, N., Dautriche, I.,  & Christophe, A. (2024). Syntactic bootstrapping as a mechanism for  language learning. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(7), 463–474. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00317-w

Kolberg, L. S., Charpentier, E., & de Carvalho, A. (2024). Coverbal Speech Gestures Do Not Impact Preschoolers' Ability to  Use Prosodic Information to Constrain Parsing. Proceedings of the 48th Boston University Conference on Language Development. 271-284, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

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Swanson, E., Rabagliati, H., & de Carvalho, A. (2024). Preschoolers’ Real-Time Eye Movements Reveal Sensitivity to  Connective Meanings During Word Learning. Proceedings of the 48th Boston University Conference on Language Development. 572-585, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

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Havron, N.*, de Carvalho, A.*, Babineau, M., Barbir, M., Dautriche, I., & Christophe, A. (2023). There might be more to syntactic bootstrapping than being pragmatic: A look at grammatical person and prosody in naturalistic child-directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000923000181

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Kartushina, N., Mani, N., Aktan-Erciyes, A., Alaslani, K., Aldrich, N. J., Almohammadi, A., Alroqi,H., Anderson, L., Andonova, E., Aussems, S., Babineau, M., Barokova, M.D., Bergmann, C., Cashon, C., Custode, S., de Carvalho, A., Dimitrova, N., Dynak, A., Farah, ... Mayor, J.  (2022). COVID-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains. Language Development Research, 2(1), 1—36. https://doi.org/10.34842/abym-xv34

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de Carvalho*, A. M., Kolberg*, L. S., Trueswell, J. C., & Christophe, A. (2022). Cross-linguistic evidence for the role of phrasal prosody in syntactic and lexical acquisition. In Speech Prosody 2022. https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-81

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Babineau, M.*, Havron, N.*, Dautriche, I., de Carvalho, A., & Christophe, A., (2022).  Learning to predict and predicting to learn: Before and beyond the syntactic bootstrapper. Language Acquisition. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2022.2078211

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de Carvalho, A., Gomes, V., & Trueswell, J. (2022). English-learning preschoolers can correctly parse and interpret negative sentences to guide their interpretations of novel noun and verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2022.2137805

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Ip, M. H. K., De Carvalho, A. M., & Trueswell, J. C. (2022). Prosody-to-Focus Mapping and Alternative Processing in Word Learning. In Speech Prosody 2022. https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-3

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de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I., Fiévet, A-C., Christophe, A. (2021). Toddlers exploit referential and syntactic cues to flexibly adapt their interpretation of novel verb meanings. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 203, 105017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105017

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Havron, N., Babineau, M., Fiévet, A-C., de Carvalho, A., & Christophe, A (2021). Syntactic prediction adaptation accounts for language processing and language learning. Language Learning, 71(4), 1194‑1221. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12466

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de Carvalho, A., Crimon, C., Barrault, A., Trueswell, J., & Christophe, A. (2021). "Look! It is not a bamoule!" 18- and 24-month-olds can use negative sentences to constrain their interpretation of novel word meanings. Developmental Science, 24(4), e13085. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13085

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Kolberg, L. S., de Carvalho, A., Babineau, M., Havron, N., Fiévet, A.-C., Abaurre, B., & Christophe, A. (2021). “The tiger is hitting! the duck too!” 3-year-olds can use prosodic information to constrain their interpretation of ellipsis. Cognition, 213, 104626. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104626

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Babineau, M., de Carvalho, A., Trueswell, J., Christophe, A. (2020). Familiar words can serve as a semantic seed for syntactic bootstrapping. Developmental Science, 24(1), e13010. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13010

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de Carvalho, A., He, A. X., Lidz, J., & Christophe, A. (2019). Prosody and function words cue the acquisition of word meanings in 18-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 30(3), 319–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618814131

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de Carvalho, A., Babineau, M., Trueswell, J. C., Waxman, S. R., & Christophe, A. (2019). Studying the Real-Time Interpretation of Novel Noun and Verb Meanings in Young Children. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 274. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00274

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Havron, N., de Carvalho, A., Fiévet, A-C, & Christophe, A. (2019). Three- to four-year-old children rapidly adapt their predictions and use them to learn novel word meanings. Child Development, 90(1), 82–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13113

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Brusini, P., de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I., Gutman, A., Cauvet, E., Millotte, S. Christophe, A. (2018) Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition. In M. Kail, M. Hickman E. Veneziano, Sources of variations in first language acquisition: Languages, contexts, and learners. Trends in Language Acquisition Research, John Benjamins, 22, pp. 63-80.

De Carvalho, A. M., Dautriche, I., Millotte, S., & Christophe, A. (2018). Chapter 2. Early perception of phrasal prosody and its role in syntactic and lexical acquisition. In John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks (pp. 17–35). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.23.02car

Brusini, P., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., van Heugten, M., de Carvalho, A., Goffinet, F., Fiévet, AC., & Christophe, A. (2017). Ambiguous function words do not prevent 18-month-olds from building accurate syntactic category expectations: An ERP study. Neuropsychologia, 98, 4‑12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.08.015

de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I., Lin, I., Christophe, A. (2017). Phrasal prosody constrains syntactic analysis in toddlers. Cognition, 163, 67-79.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.02.018

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de Carvalho, A., Lidz, J., Tieu, L., Bleam, T., Christophe, A. (2016). English-speaking preschoolers can use phrasal prosody for syntactic parsing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139(6), EL216-EL222. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4954385

de Carvalho, A., Dautriche, I., Christophe, A. (2016). Preschoolers use phrasal prosody online to constrain syntactic analysis. Developmental Science, 19(2), 235-250. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12300

de Carvalho, A.*, Reboul, A.*, Van der Henst, J-B., Chelyus, A., Nazir, T. (2016). Scalar Implicatures: The Psychological Reality of Scales. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1500. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01500

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