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Andrea Krott

University of Birmingham, Psychology, Faculty Member

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Andrea Krott is interested in children's language acquisition and in the brain processes that are involved in language comprehension and production in adults. With regards to language acquisition, she mainly studies how children acquire words.With regards to adult language processing, she often uses EEG to better understand the neural processes that underlie language comprehension or production.
Phone: +44 (0)121 4144903
Address: School of Psychology
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK
B15 2TT

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Karen Steffen Chung

National Taiwan University

Morten H. Christiansen

Cornell University

Harvard University

University of California, Merced

University of Cambridge

University of Amsterdam

Pennsylvania State University

Case Western Reserve University

Vsevolod Kapatsinski

University of Oregon

Martin Haspelmath

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Papers by Andrea Krott

GR8 msg! Are these actual words?

Vocabulary of 2-Year-Olds Learning English and an Additional Language: Norms and Effects of Linguistic Distance

GR8 msg! Are these actual words?

Sinking about boats and brains: Activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native and nonnative listeners

Sinking about boats and brains: activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native a... more Sinking about boats and brains: activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native and non-native listeners Andrea Weber, Meghan Sumner, Andrea Krott, Falk Huettig, Adriana Hanulikova Understanding foreign-accented speech requires from listeners the correct interpretation of segmental variation as in German-accented [s]eft for English theft. The task difficulty increases when the accented word forms resemble existing words as in [s]ink for think. In two English priming experiments, we investigated the activation of the meanings of intended and unintended words by accented primes. American native (L1) and German non-native (L2) participants listened to auditory primes followed by visual targets to which they made lexical decisions. Primes were produced by a native German speaker and were either nonsense words ([s]eft for theft), unintended words ([s]ink for think), or words in their canonical forms (salt for salt). Furthermore, primes were strongly associated to targets, with the co-occurrence being high either between the surface form of the prime and the target ([s]ink-BOAT, salt-PEPPER) or the underlying form and the target ([s]ink-BRAIN, seft-PRISON). L1 listeners responded faster when the underlying form was associated with the target (in comparison to unrelated primes), but L2 listeners responded faster when the surface form was associated. Seemingly, L1 listeners interpreted all primes as being mispronounced – facilitating the activation of think when hearing the unintended word [s]ink, but erroneously preventing the activation of salt when hearing the canonical form salt. L2 listeners, though, took primes at face value and failed to activate the meaning of think when hearing [s]ink but did activate the meaning of salt when hearing salt. This asymmetry suggests an interesting difference in the use of high-level information, with L1 listeners, but not L2 listeners, using knowledge about segmental variations for immediate meaning activation

Ondrzk vd nwe taal

Lexical representations of SMS shortcuts

As the popularity of sending messages electronically increased, so did the necessity of conveying... more As the popularity of sending messages electronically increased, so did the necessity of conveying messages more efficiently. A popular way of increasing efficiency is to use shortcuts such as gr8 “great” or cu “see you”. The aim of the study was to investigate whether such abbreviations have their own lexical representations or whether they are recorded into the words they stand for. We used associative masked and overt priming in lexical decision tasks. Primes were text shortcuts and their corresponding words. Targets were words that were associatively related to the prime (e.g., cu/see you – GOODBYE), associatively related to a part of the prime (e.g., cu/see you – LOOK) or unrelated to the prime and any part of the prime (e.g., 4u/for you – GOODBYE; 4u/for you – LOOK). In both tasks, responses were faster to targets preceded by related compared to unrelated primes (shortcuts and words). In the overt priming task, we in addition found faster responses when the target was related to a part of the prime. However, this effect was present only for word but not for shortcut primes. These results indicate that shortcuts have their own lexical representations that are independent of the representations of the individual words they replace

Early assessment of English for bilingual children with different percentages of exposure

WinG: Words in Game Test

Second language learning at school enhances Theory of Mind skills

Research Square (Research Square), Sep 23, 2022

Early learning of a second language at home has been found to be bene cial for children's cogniti... more Early learning of a second language at home has been found to be bene cial for children's cognitive development, including their ability to ascribe mental states to others, also called Theory of Mind. We investigated whether later second language learning in an educational setting can accelerate children's Theory of Mind development and whether the amount of exposure to second language education makes a difference. We tested three groups of monolingual four-ve year old children with varying language exposure at the beginning of their rst year at primary school and 24 weeks later. Children attending bilingual schools and children with weekly short second language lessons exhibited very similar accelerated Theory of Mind development compared to children without any second language provision. Theory of Mind advances were not related to other cognitive advances. Thus, limited foreign language teaching can boost young children's social cognitive development, providing an enhanced basis for their social competence development.

Beyond the Shape of Things: Infants Can Be Taught to Generalize Nouns by Objects’ Functions

Psychological Science, Jun 10, 2021

Infants learn words rapidly, especially object names (Frank et al., 2017). Early vocabulary devel... more Infants learn words rapidly, especially object names (Frank et al., 2017). Early vocabulary development has profound and lasting consequences. For instance, children's early vocabulary size and language skills predict later academic success (Bleses et al., 2016; Morgan et al., 2015). It is therefore important to study wordlearning strategies that promote rapid vocabulary growth in infancy. The Role of Shape and Function in Word Learning and Generalization When learning and extending object labels, infants, children, and adults prioritize different object properties depending on the task and information available (e.g., Diesendruck et al., 2003; Graham et al., 1999; Namy & Clepper, 2010). Older children and adults generalize labels on the basis of an object's shape and function but prioritize function over shape when function information is available (Gathercole & Whitfield, 2001; Graham et al., 1999; Mueller Gathercole et al., 1995). Function is important because it provides information about an object's intended use (Diesendruck et al., 2003) and therefore about its category (Booth & Waxman, 2002a). The knowledge of function helps to classify objects into the right category. Because the shape and function of objects are often correlated, shape can also indicate the object category. However, shape can sometimes be misleading (e.g., slippers that look like rabbits). Nevertheless, infants and younger children typically generalize object labels by shape, a strategy called shape bias (

Information packaging in speech shapes information packaging in gesture: The role of speech planning units in the coordination of speech-gesture production

Journal of Memory and Language, Feb 1, 2019

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more

Multimodal language processing: How preceding discourse constrains gesture interpretation and affects gesture integration when gestures do not synchronise with semantic affiliates

Journal of Memory and Language, Apr 1, 2021

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more

Rules and rote: Beyond the linguistic either-or fallacy

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Dec 1, 1999

We report an experiment that unambiguously shows an effect of full-form frequency for fully regul... more

Word Family Size and French-Speaking Children's Segmentation of Existing Compounds

Language Learning, Jun 1, 2007

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the con... more The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, affects English-speaking children's compound segmentation. This finding is consistent with a usage-based theory of language acquisition, whereby children learn abstract underlying linguistic structure through their experience with particular words. The family-size effect is particularly strong for the modifier or the leftmost element. The present study tested whether the effect of family size also holds for left-headed compounds as in French (e.g., chef de police "chief of police") and whether the effect is due to headedness or left-to-right processing. Twenty-eight Frenchspeaking children between 3;5 and 5;3 were asked to explain the meaning of existing compounds with constituents of varying family size. The children were more likely to mention a constituent when it came from a large family than a small family, suggesting that children's segmentation of compounds might be facilitated by analogy with existing compounds. Furthermore, as in the previous English study, children mentioned modifiers more often than heads, showing their sensitivity to the semantic roles of the constituents, rather than left-to-right processing.

Removal of muscle artifacts from EEG recordings by ICA during overt speech production

Analogical effects in the comprehension of interfixed Dutch compounds

Item does not contain fulltextAMLaP, 21 september 200

Functional neural architecture of cognitive control mediates the relationship between individual differences in bilingual experience and behaviour

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Oct 7, 2022

Bilinguals have often, but not always, been found to outperform monolinguals on domaingeneral att... more Bilinguals have often, but not always, been found to outperform monolinguals on domaingeneral attentional control. Inconsistent findings have been argued to stem, at least partly, from treating bilingualism as a uniform category and from not considering how neural adaptations to bilingual experiences modulate behavioural outcomes. The present study investigated how patterns of language experience, including language switching behaviour, duration and intensity/diversity of bilingual language use, influence the brain processes underlying cognitive control, and how these in turn translate to cognitive control performance. We examined reaction times and spectral dynamics of the electroencephalograms (EEG) of two-hundred-and-thirty-nine participants (about 70% bilinguals) with diverse language experiences during two cognitive control paradigms testing interference suppression (flanker and Simon task). Using structural equation modelling, we found that different bilingual experience factors were related with neurocognitive measures, which in turn were related with behavioural interference effects, for the flanker but not the Simon task. More specifically, increased frequency of language switching and intensity / diversity of bilingual language usage was negatively related to induced top-down control measures (especially midline-frontal theta), which in turn was beneficial for interference

What about lexical competition? Exploring the locus of lexical retrieval deficits in adults with developmental dyslexia

Neuropsychology (journal), Sep 27, 2021

Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern yo... more Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

Bilingual speakers’ enhanced monitoring can slow them down

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), May 14, 2021

Performance differences between bilingual and monolingual participants on conflict tasks can be a... more Performance differences between bilingual and monolingual participants on conflict tasks can be affected by the balance of various sub-processes such as monitoring and stimulus categorisation. Here we investigated the effect of bilingualism on these sub-processes during a conflict task with medium monitoring demand. We examined the behavioural and evoked potentials from a group of bilingual and monolingual speakers during a flanker task with 25% incongruent trials. We analysed behavioural differences by means of averaged response times and ex-Gaussian analyses of response time distributions. For the evoked potentials we focused on the N2 (implicated to be involved in monitoring) and P300 (implicated to be involved in categorisation) responses. We found that bilinguals had significantly longer response distribution tails compared to monolinguals. Additionally, bilinguals exhibited a more pronounced N2 and smaller P3 components compared to their monolingual counterparts, independent of experimental condition, suggesting enhanced monitoring processes and reduced categorisation effort. Importantly, N2 amplitudes were positively and P3 amplitudes were negatively related to the length of response distribution tails. We postulate that these results reflect an overactive monitoring system in bilinguals in a task of medium monitoring demand. This enhanced monitoring leads to less effortful categorisation, but also occasionally to slow responses. These results suggest that changes of the cognitive control system due to bilingual experience changes the balance of processes during conflict tasks, potentially leading to a small behavioural disadvantage.

Information Packaging in Speech Shapes Information Packaging in Gesture (raw data and R scripts)

Linguistic encoding influences the gestural manner and path depiction of motion events. Gestures ... more Linguistic encoding influences the gestural manner and path depiction of motion events. Gestures depict manner and path of motion events differently across languages, either conflating or separating manner and path, depending on whether manner and path are linguistically encoded within one clause (e.g., "rolling down") or multiple clauses (e.g., "descends as it rolls") respectively. However, it is unclear whether such gestural differences are affected by how speech packages information into planning units or by the way information is lexicalised (as verb plus particle or as two verbs). In two experiments, we manipulated the linguistic encoding of motion events in either one or two planning units while lexicalisation patterns were kept constant (i.e., verb plus particle). It was found that separating manner (verb) and path (particle) into different planning units also increased gestural manner and path separation. Thus, lexicalisation patterns do not drive gestural depiction of motion events. Rather gestures are shaped online by how speakers package information into planning units in speech production. adapt to fine-grained differences in verb semantics (Gullberg, 2011; Gullberg & Narasimhan, 2010; Kita & Özyürek, 2003), and it has been suggested that the content of a gesture is linked to how clauses package information in speech (Kita, 2000; Kita & Özyürek, 2003). Evidence for the influence of linguistic packaging on gestural content stems from cross-linguistic studies on motion event gestures (Kita &

GR8 msg! Are these actual words?

Vocabulary of 2-Year-Olds Learning English and an Additional Language: Norms and Effects of Linguistic Distance

GR8 msg! Are these actual words?

Sinking about boats and brains: Activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native and nonnative listeners

Sinking about boats and brains: activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native a... more Sinking about boats and brains: activation of word meaning in foreign-accented speech by native and non-native listeners Andrea Weber, Meghan Sumner, Andrea Krott, Falk Huettig, Adriana Hanulikova Understanding foreign-accented speech requires from listeners the correct interpretation of segmental variation as in German-accented [s]eft for English theft. The task difficulty increases when the accented word forms resemble existing words as in [s]ink for think. In two English priming experiments, we investigated the activation of the meanings of intended and unintended words by accented primes. American native (L1) and German non-native (L2) participants listened to auditory primes followed by visual targets to which they made lexical decisions. Primes were produced by a native German speaker and were either nonsense words ([s]eft for theft), unintended words ([s]ink for think), or words in their canonical forms (salt for salt). Furthermore, primes were strongly associated to targets, with the co-occurrence being high either between the surface form of the prime and the target ([s]ink-BOAT, salt-PEPPER) or the underlying form and the target ([s]ink-BRAIN, seft-PRISON). L1 listeners responded faster when the underlying form was associated with the target (in comparison to unrelated primes), but L2 listeners responded faster when the surface form was associated. Seemingly, L1 listeners interpreted all primes as being mispronounced – facilitating the activation of think when hearing the unintended word [s]ink, but erroneously preventing the activation of salt when hearing the canonical form salt. L2 listeners, though, took primes at face value and failed to activate the meaning of think when hearing [s]ink but did activate the meaning of salt when hearing salt. This asymmetry suggests an interesting difference in the use of high-level information, with L1 listeners, but not L2 listeners, using knowledge about segmental variations for immediate meaning activation

Ondrzk vd nwe taal

Lexical representations of SMS shortcuts

As the popularity of sending messages electronically increased, so did the necessity of conveying... more As the popularity of sending messages electronically increased, so did the necessity of conveying messages more efficiently. A popular way of increasing efficiency is to use shortcuts such as gr8 “great” or cu “see you”. The aim of the study was to investigate whether such abbreviations have their own lexical representations or whether they are recorded into the words they stand for. We used associative masked and overt priming in lexical decision tasks. Primes were text shortcuts and their corresponding words. Targets were words that were associatively related to the prime (e.g., cu/see you – GOODBYE), associatively related to a part of the prime (e.g., cu/see you – LOOK) or unrelated to the prime and any part of the prime (e.g., 4u/for you – GOODBYE; 4u/for you – LOOK). In both tasks, responses were faster to targets preceded by related compared to unrelated primes (shortcuts and words). In the overt priming task, we in addition found faster responses when the target was related to a part of the prime. However, this effect was present only for word but not for shortcut primes. These results indicate that shortcuts have their own lexical representations that are independent of the representations of the individual words they replace

Early assessment of English for bilingual children with different percentages of exposure

WinG: Words in Game Test

Second language learning at school enhances Theory of Mind skills

Research Square (Research Square), Sep 23, 2022

Early learning of a second language at home has been found to be bene cial for children's cogniti... more Early learning of a second language at home has been found to be bene cial for children's cognitive development, including their ability to ascribe mental states to others, also called Theory of Mind. We investigated whether later second language learning in an educational setting can accelerate children's Theory of Mind development and whether the amount of exposure to second language education makes a difference. We tested three groups of monolingual four-ve year old children with varying language exposure at the beginning of their rst year at primary school and 24 weeks later. Children attending bilingual schools and children with weekly short second language lessons exhibited very similar accelerated Theory of Mind development compared to children without any second language provision. Theory of Mind advances were not related to other cognitive advances. Thus, limited foreign language teaching can boost young children's social cognitive development, providing an enhanced basis for their social competence development.

Beyond the Shape of Things: Infants Can Be Taught to Generalize Nouns by Objects’ Functions

Psychological Science, Jun 10, 2021

Infants learn words rapidly, especially object names (Frank et al., 2017). Early vocabulary devel... more Infants learn words rapidly, especially object names (Frank et al., 2017). Early vocabulary development has profound and lasting consequences. For instance, children's early vocabulary size and language skills predict later academic success (Bleses et al., 2016; Morgan et al., 2015). It is therefore important to study wordlearning strategies that promote rapid vocabulary growth in infancy. The Role of Shape and Function in Word Learning and Generalization When learning and extending object labels, infants, children, and adults prioritize different object properties depending on the task and information available (e.g., Diesendruck et al., 2003; Graham et al., 1999; Namy & Clepper, 2010). Older children and adults generalize labels on the basis of an object's shape and function but prioritize function over shape when function information is available (Gathercole & Whitfield, 2001; Graham et al., 1999; Mueller Gathercole et al., 1995). Function is important because it provides information about an object's intended use (Diesendruck et al., 2003) and therefore about its category (Booth & Waxman, 2002a). The knowledge of function helps to classify objects into the right category. Because the shape and function of objects are often correlated, shape can also indicate the object category. However, shape can sometimes be misleading (e.g., slippers that look like rabbits). Nevertheless, infants and younger children typically generalize object labels by shape, a strategy called shape bias (

Information packaging in speech shapes information packaging in gesture: The role of speech planning units in the coordination of speech-gesture production

Journal of Memory and Language, Feb 1, 2019

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more

Multimodal language processing: How preceding discourse constrains gesture interpretation and affects gesture integration when gestures do not synchronise with semantic affiliates

Journal of Memory and Language, Apr 1, 2021

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more

Rules and rote: Beyond the linguistic either-or fallacy

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Dec 1, 1999

We report an experiment that unambiguously shows an effect of full-form frequency for fully regul... more

Word Family Size and French-Speaking Children's Segmentation of Existing Compounds

Language Learning, Jun 1, 2007

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the con... more The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, affects English-speaking children's compound segmentation. This finding is consistent with a usage-based theory of language acquisition, whereby children learn abstract underlying linguistic structure through their experience with particular words. The family-size effect is particularly strong for the modifier or the leftmost element. The present study tested whether the effect of family size also holds for left-headed compounds as in French (e.g., chef de police "chief of police") and whether the effect is due to headedness or left-to-right processing. Twenty-eight Frenchspeaking children between 3;5 and 5;3 were asked to explain the meaning of existing compounds with constituents of varying family size. The children were more likely to mention a constituent when it came from a large family than a small family, suggesting that children's segmentation of compounds might be facilitated by analogy with existing compounds. Furthermore, as in the previous English study, children mentioned modifiers more often than heads, showing their sensitivity to the semantic roles of the constituents, rather than left-to-right processing.

Removal of muscle artifacts from EEG recordings by ICA during overt speech production

Analogical effects in the comprehension of interfixed Dutch compounds

Item does not contain fulltextAMLaP, 21 september 200

Functional neural architecture of cognitive control mediates the relationship between individual differences in bilingual experience and behaviour

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Oct 7, 2022

Bilinguals have often, but not always, been found to outperform monolinguals on domaingeneral att... more Bilinguals have often, but not always, been found to outperform monolinguals on domaingeneral attentional control. Inconsistent findings have been argued to stem, at least partly, from treating bilingualism as a uniform category and from not considering how neural adaptations to bilingual experiences modulate behavioural outcomes. The present study investigated how patterns of language experience, including language switching behaviour, duration and intensity/diversity of bilingual language use, influence the brain processes underlying cognitive control, and how these in turn translate to cognitive control performance. We examined reaction times and spectral dynamics of the electroencephalograms (EEG) of two-hundred-and-thirty-nine participants (about 70% bilinguals) with diverse language experiences during two cognitive control paradigms testing interference suppression (flanker and Simon task). Using structural equation modelling, we found that different bilingual experience factors were related with neurocognitive measures, which in turn were related with behavioural interference effects, for the flanker but not the Simon task. More specifically, increased frequency of language switching and intensity / diversity of bilingual language usage was negatively related to induced top-down control measures (especially midline-frontal theta), which in turn was beneficial for interference

What about lexical competition? Exploring the locus of lexical retrieval deficits in adults with developmental dyslexia

Neuropsychology (journal), Sep 27, 2021

Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern yo... more Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

Bilingual speakers’ enhanced monitoring can slow them down

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), May 14, 2021

Performance differences between bilingual and monolingual participants on conflict tasks can be a... more Performance differences between bilingual and monolingual participants on conflict tasks can be affected by the balance of various sub-processes such as monitoring and stimulus categorisation. Here we investigated the effect of bilingualism on these sub-processes during a conflict task with medium monitoring demand. We examined the behavioural and evoked potentials from a group of bilingual and monolingual speakers during a flanker task with 25% incongruent trials. We analysed behavioural differences by means of averaged response times and ex-Gaussian analyses of response time distributions. For the evoked potentials we focused on the N2 (implicated to be involved in monitoring) and P300 (implicated to be involved in categorisation) responses. We found that bilinguals had significantly longer response distribution tails compared to monolinguals. Additionally, bilinguals exhibited a more pronounced N2 and smaller P3 components compared to their monolingual counterparts, independent of experimental condition, suggesting enhanced monitoring processes and reduced categorisation effort. Importantly, N2 amplitudes were positively and P3 amplitudes were negatively related to the length of response distribution tails. We postulate that these results reflect an overactive monitoring system in bilinguals in a task of medium monitoring demand. This enhanced monitoring leads to less effortful categorisation, but also occasionally to slow responses. These results suggest that changes of the cognitive control system due to bilingual experience changes the balance of processes during conflict tasks, potentially leading to a small behavioural disadvantage.

Information Packaging in Speech Shapes Information Packaging in Gesture (raw data and R scripts)

Linguistic encoding influences the gestural manner and path depiction of motion events. Gestures ... more Linguistic encoding influences the gestural manner and path depiction of motion events. Gestures depict manner and path of motion events differently across languages, either conflating or separating manner and path, depending on whether manner and path are linguistically encoded within one clause (e.g., "rolling down") or multiple clauses (e.g., "descends as it rolls") respectively. However, it is unclear whether such gestural differences are affected by how speech packages information into planning units or by the way information is lexicalised (as verb plus particle or as two verbs). In two experiments, we manipulated the linguistic encoding of motion events in either one or two planning units while lexicalisation patterns were kept constant (i.e., verb plus particle). It was found that separating manner (verb) and path (particle) into different planning units also increased gestural manner and path separation. Thus, lexicalisation patterns do not drive gestural depiction of motion events. Rather gestures are shaped online by how speakers package information into planning units in speech production. adapt to fine-grained differences in verb semantics (Gullberg, 2011; Gullberg & Narasimhan, 2010; Kita & Özyürek, 2003), and it has been suggested that the content of a gesture is linked to how clauses package information in speech (Kita, 2000; Kita & Özyürek, 2003). Evidence for the influence of linguistic packaging on gestural content stems from cross-linguistic studies on motion event gestures (Kita &