Lydia Wiernik
I'm a hearing neurolinguist interested in how multimodal language experience influences cognitive organisation and processing. More specifically, I'm interested in bimodal bilingualism, the relationships between sign language experience, embodiment, and cognition, and how deaf and signing communities make meaning using multimodal and semiotic resources. I'm also interested in accessibility in academia and open-access publishing, as well as attenuating the reproduction of negative ideologies about sign language and deafness in neuroscience and linguistics through the application of disability frameworks to neurolinguistic research.
Education
MA (Hons) Linguistics and English Language 2020 - 2024
University of Edinburgh
First Class Honours
Dissertation: The Influence of Signed Language Acquisition on Cognitive Strategies for Visuospatial Perspective-Taking (Supervisor: Dr. Gabrielle Hodge)
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​A conceptual replication of Secora & Emmorey (2019) which investigated a VSPT paradigm on hearing signers (BSL interpreters in the UK) for the first time
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Scripted experiment from scratch in JavaScript and HTML (code open-access on OSF) and 3D-modeled all stimuli to adapt the 3 Buildings paradigm (Clements-Stephens et al., 2013) to a digital format for the first time
Skills
Research experience
Guest Researcher April 2024 - present
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Neuropsychology department
Supervisors: Dr. Angela D. Friederici, Mr. Patrick Trettenbrein, & Drs. Philipp Kuhnke and Sabrina Turker​
Research Assistant March 2024 - present
Visual Communication & Reading Development Project, University College London, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Deafness, Cognition, and Language Research Centre
Supervisor: Dr. Mairéad MacSweeney
Honorary Research Associate August 2023 - present
University of the West of England, Brain, Language, and Behaviour Laboratory
Supervisor: Dr. Anna Piasecki​
Natural languages
English
French
Ancient Greek
Korean
ASL
BSL
German
Native
C1
Proficient
A2
Level 1 (A1)
Level 1 (A1)
A1
Other skills
EEG, TMS, Praat, GingerALE, Sleuth, SPM, ELAN, LaTeX
Computational languages
R
JavaScript
MATLAB
HTML
Python
Proficient
Proficient
Proficient
Proficient
Intermediate
Languages of research interest
ASL, BSL
Oswald, my research assistant