Georgetown University
Department of Neuroscience
Building D, room 235A
4000 Reservoir Road, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20057
USA

E-Mail: Jana.Reifegerste@georgetown.edu
Phone: +1-202-687-8489

ResearchGate Profile

 

Education

2014 PhD in Social Sciences, Radboud University (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics),
Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Field: Psycholinguistics
Thesis Title: Morphological Processing in younger and older people: Evidence for flexible dual-route access
Advisors: Antje S. Meyer and Pienie Zwitserlood
2010 Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, McGill University, Canada
 

Publications

(If you would like a copy of any publication listed here, please contact me)

Hopp, H., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2025). Lexical effects on L2 grammar acquisition: Testing psycholinguistic and neurocognitive predictions. Language Learning, 75, 424-457. doi:10.1111/lang.12672
Zona, C. I.#, & Reifegerste, J. (2025). Visual context benefits spoken sentence comprehension across the lifespan. Journal of Memory and Language, 140, 104576. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2024.104576
Miklashevsky, A., Reifegerste, J., Balota, D. A., García, A. M., Pulvermüller, F., Veríssimo, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2024). Embodied cognition comes of age: A processing advantage for action words is modulated by aging and the task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153, 7, 1725-1764. doi:10.1037/xge0001555
Chen, S.*, Gil, D.*, Gaponov, S., Reifegerste, J., , Yuditha, T., Tatarinova, T., Progovac, Lj.*, & Benítez-Burraco, A.* (2024). Linguistic and cognitive correlates of societal variation: A quantitative analysis. PLOS ONE, 19, e0300838. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0300838
Reifegerste, J. (2024). Inflectional processing across the adult lifespan: A tale of gains and losses. Journal of Language and Aging Research, 2, 85-143. doi:10.15460/jlar.2024.2.1.1053
Reifegerste, J., Garibagaoglu, A., & Felser, C. (2023). Conceptual number in bilingual agreement computation: Evidence from German pseudo-partitives. Languages, 8, 147. doi:10.3390/languages8020147
Reifegerste, J., Meyer, A. S., Zwitserlood, P., & Ullman, M. T. (2021). Aging affects steaks more than knives: Evidence that the processing of words related to motor skills is relatively spared in aging. Brain and Language, 218, 104941. doi:0.1016/j.bandl.2021.104941
Reifegerste, J. (2021). The effects of aging on bilingual language: What changes, what doesn’t, and why. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24, 1-17. doi:10.1017/S1366728920000413
Reifegerste, J., Veríssimo, J., Rugg, M. D., Pullman, M., Babcock, L., Glei, D., Weinstein, M., Goldman, N., & Ullman, M. T. (2021). Early-life education may help bolster declarative memory in old age, especially for women. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 28, 218-252. doi:10.1080/13825585.2020.1736497
Reifegerste, J., Estabrooke, I. V., Russell, L. E., Veríssimo, J., Johari, K., Wilmarth, B., Pagan, F. L., Moussa, C., & Ullman, M. T. (2020). Can sex influence the neurocognition of language? Evidence from Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 148, 107633. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107633
Reifegerste, J., Jarvis, R., & Felser, C. (2020). Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing: Evidence from subject-verb agreement in German. Journal of Memory and Language, 111, 104083. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083
Reifegerste, J., Elin, K., & Clahsen, H. (2019). Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals: Evidence from inflectional and derivational processing in older speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22, 425-440. doi:10.1017/S1366728918000615
Johari, K., Walenski, M., Reifegerste, J., Ashrafi, F., Behroozmand, R., Daemi, M., & Ullman, M. T. (2019). A dissociation between syntactic and lexical processing in Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 51, 221-235. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.03.004
Johari, K., Walenski, M., Reifegerste, J., Ashrafi, F., & Ullman, M. T. (2019). Sex, dopamine, and language: A study of inflectional morphology in Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychology, 33, 508-522. doi:10.1037/neu0000533
Prehn, K., Taud, B., Reifegerste, J., Clahsen, H., & Flöel, A. (2018). Neural correlates of grammatical inflection in older native and second-language speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 1-12. doi:10.1017/S1366728916001206
Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2017). Accessing morphosyntactic information is preserved at old age, except for irregulars. The Mental Lexicon, 12, 342-372.
Reifegerste, J., & Felser, C. (2017). Effects of aging on interference during pronoun resolution. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, 3573-3589. doi:10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-17-0183
Clahsen, H., & Reifegerste, J. (2017). Morphological processing in old-age bilinguals. In M. Libben, M. Goral, & G. Libben (Eds.), Bilingualism: A Framework for Understanding the Mental Lexicon (pp. 217-248). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Reifegerste, J., Hauer, F., & Felser, C. (2017). Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging: Evidence from subject-verb agreement in German. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 24, 672-702. doi:10.1080/13825585.2016.1251550
Reifegerste, J., Meyer, A. S., & Zwitserlood, P. (2017). Inflectional complexity and experience affect plural processing in younger and older readers of Dutch and German. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32, 471-487. doi:10.1080/23273798.2016.1247213
Clahsen, H., Heyer, V., & Reifegerste, J. (2016). Linguistic perspectives on morphological processing. (Editorial). The Mental Lexicon, 11, 161-163.
Reifegerste, J. (2014). Morphological processing in younger and older people: Evidence for flexible dual-route access. (Doctoral dissertation). Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
[* indicates equal contribution]
[# indicates student first author]
 

Symposia organized

Reifegerste, J., & Prehn, K. (2017). How aging affects language processing: lexical access and grammatical computation. Symposium organized at the 20th Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany.

Keynotes and invited talks

Reifegerste, J. (2026). You win some, you lose some: How brain atrophy and life experience shape word retrieval in aging. Invited keynote at the 13th International Word Processing Conference (WoProc2026), University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Reifegerste, J. (2024). Language processing in the aging mind and brain: What changes, what doesn’t, and why? Invited keynote at the workshop “Language Processing in Aging,” The Bilingual Mind Research Group, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitória-Gasteiz, Spain.
Ullman, M. T., & Reifegerste, J. (2023). The cognitive neuroscience of aging: What declines, why does it happen, and what can you do about it? Invited talk at the Center for Cognitive Science of Language, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.
Reifegerste, J. (2022). Language processing across the lifespan: What changes, what doesn’t, and why? Invited talk at the conference “Diversity in Language and Cognition,” Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany.
Reifegerste, J. (2021). Sentence processing and aging. Invited talk at the Bilingual Mind research group, Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitória-Gasteiz, Spain.
Reifegerste, J. (2020). Language and aging. Invited talk at the International Conference on Cognitive Science of Language, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China. [Canceled.]
Reifegerste, J. (2019). Language Processing in Aging: what changes, and why. Invited talk at the Maryland Language Science Center, University of Maryland, College Park MD, USA.
Reifegerste, J. (2019). Aging and the processing of language. Invited talk at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
Reifegerste, J. (2018). Aging and Language: What’s cognition got to do with it?. Invited talk at the Neurolinguistics Laboratory, Department of Language-Hearing Sciences, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York NY, USA.
Reifegerste, J. (2016). Aging and Language. Invited talk at the Brain and Language Lab, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA.
Reifegerste, J. & Clahsen, H. (2016). Morphological Processing in older L1 and L2 speakers. Oral presentation at the workshop on Impairments in the Mental Lexicon: The case of child and adult bilinguals, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2015). Morphological priming in old-age bilinguals. Invited talk at the 10th International Symposium for Bilingualism, New Brunswick, USA.

Conference talks

Gil, D., Chen, S., Kurniathi, S., Prima Putri, Y., Rahman, F., Reifegerste, J., Yuditha, T., & Benítez-Burraco, A. (2025). Exotercity of Malayic Varieties. Talk at the 28th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics (ISMIL 28), Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2024). Age-related differences in agreement processing: Insights from an eye-tracking study. Talk at the 2024 Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Asia (AMLaP Asia 2024), Singapore.
Reifegerste, J., Ullman, M. T., & Lyons, I. M. (2024). Age-related declines in hippocampal volumes explain strong age-related declines in simple math-fact retrieval. Talk at the 3rd Annual Georgetown University Medical Center Healthy Aging Symposium, Washington DC, USA.
Buffington, J., Ullman, M. T., & Reifegerste, J. (2024). Word Learning Declines in Aging: A Role for the Hippocampus? Talk at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New York NY, USA.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Lago, S., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2024). Aging effects in prediction and agreement processing. Talk at the workshop “Language Processing in Aging,” The Bilingual Mind Research Group, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitória-Gasteiz, Spain.
Reifegerste, J., Ullman, M. T., & Lyons, I. M. (2024). Age-related declines in hippocampal volumes explain strong age-related declines in simple math-fact retrieval. Talk at the 2024 conference of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society (MCLS 2024), Washington DC, USA.
Benítez-Burraco, A., Chen, S., Gil, D., Reifegerste, J., Tatarinova, T. & Progovac, Lj. (2023). Patterns of correlation between linguistic and sociopolitical complexity. Talk at the 2023 Conference on Complexity in Language Variation and Change (COMPILA 2023), Tokyo, Japan.
Benítez-Burraco, A., Chen, S., Gil, D., Progovac, Lj., Reifegerste, J., & Tatarinova, T. (2023). Looking for correlations between language structural complexity and sociopolitical complexity. Talk at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2023), Athens, Greece.
Hopp, H., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2023). Procedural memory and lexical constraints on L2 implicit grammatical learning. Talk at the 32nd Conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA 32), Birmingham, UK.
Zona, C. I., & Reifegerste, J. (2022). Weighting visual and linguistic cues for sentence comprehension: a lifespan study. Talk at the 22nd Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP 2022), Lille, France.
Bénitez Burraco, A., Cahuana, C., Gil, D., Progovac, Lj., Reifegerste, J., & Tatarinova, T. (2022). Cognitive and genetic correlates of a single macro-parameter of crosslinguistic variation. Talk at the workshop “Cognitive and Cultural Influences on Language Emergence,” virtual event.
Reifegerste, J. (2022). Healthy aging affects storage-based, but not rule-based inflectional processing: A cross-modal priming study on German plurals. Talk at the 5th Corpora for Language and Aging Research conference (CLARe5), Anchorage AK, USA.
Reifegerste, J. (2022). Sprache im Alter — was verändert sich, was bleibt, und warum? [Language in aging – what changes, what doesn’t, and why?]. Talk at the Potsdamer Tag der Wissenschaften [Potsdam Science Day], Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., Zwitserlood, P., Meyer, A. S., & Ullman, M. T. (2018). Aging affects steaks more than knives: Evidence that lexical processing of words related to motor skills is relatively spared in aging. Talk at the 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Edmonton, Canada.
Elin, K., Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2018). Ageing, bilingualism and language processing: A study of morphological processing in older adults. Talk at the 28th conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA 28), Münster, Germany.
Elin, K., Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2018). Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals: Evidence from inflectional and derivational processing in older speakers. Talk at the 2nd International Symposium on Bilingual Processing in Adults and Children (ISBPAC 2018), Braunschweig, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., & Prehn, K. (2017). Grammatical computation versus lexical look-up: selective aging effects in language processing. Talk at the 20th Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2016). Access to Complex Inflectional Paradigms is Preserved in Aging. Talk at the 10th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Ottawa, Canada.
Reifegerste, J. & Clahsen, H. (2016). Morphological Processing in older L1 and L2 speakers. Talk at the workshop on Impairments in the Mental Lexicon: The case of child and adult bilinguals, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J. (2016). Illusory licensing effects in younger vs. older adults. Talk at the Sentence Processing in Multilingual and Other Less Commonly Studied Populations workshop, Potsdam, Germany.
Veríssimo, J., Reifegerste, J., & Clahsen, H. (2016). Morphological structure in native and non-native processing: Linguistic and subject-level factors. Talk at the International Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Granada, Spain.
Reifegerste, J., Meyer, A. S., & Zwitserlood, P. (2015). Morphological processing in younger and older speakers: Evidence from German and Dutch plurals. Talk at the Psycho- and neurolinguistic approaches to the grammar-lexicon distinction workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Prehn, K., Taud, B., Reifegerste, J., Clahsen, H., & Flöel, A. (2015). Neural correlates of morphological processing in older late bilinguals. Talk at the 9th International Morphological Processing Conference, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J. (2015). Zwei Sprachen in einem Gehirn – Bilingualismus unter der Lupe. Talk at the Potsdamer Tag der Wissenschaften, Potsdam, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., Zwitserlood, P., & Meyer, A. S. (2013). The influence of pseudoword material on the processing of Dutch past-tense verbs. Talk at the 8th International Morphological Processing Conference, Cambridge, UK.
Reifegerste, J., & Meyer, A. S. (2012). The influence of Age on the mental representation of polymorphemic words in Dutch. Talk at the Morphological Complexity meeting, London, UK.

Poster Presentations

Gonering, B., Reifegerste, J., Lipscomb, D. W., DeMarco, A. T., Flowers, S. A., Veríssimo, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2026). The role of medial temporal lobe circuitry in age-related word comprehension declines: Behavioral, anatomical, and genetic evidence. Poster presentation at the 2026 Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience 2026), Washington DC, USA.
Cardoso-Botelho, M., Reifegerste, J., Kleinmintz, O. M., Smith, E., Ullman, M. T., & Green, A. E. (2026). Selective Change in the Alternative Uses Task Across the Lifespan. Poster presentation at the 2026 Conference of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity (SfNC 2026), Philadelphia PA, USA.
Buffington, J., Ullman, M. T., & Reifegerste, J. (2025). Hippocampal contributions to vocabulary learning across the adult lifespan. Poster presentation at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Washington DC, USA.
Buffington, J., Tagarelli, K. M., Yanni, E., Reddy, S., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2025). A longitudinal study of neurocognitive mechanisms in adult language learning: Evidence from a miniature language. Poster presentation at the 2025 Language Learning roundtable conference entitled “Cognitive neuroscience of individual differences in adult language learning: Future directions” (CogNeuroIDALL), Chicago IL, USA.
Shideler, M., Cardoso-Botelho, M., Reifegerste, J., Kleinmintz, O. M., Ullman, M. T., & Green, A. E. (2025). Influences of Local Brain Volume on Aging-Related Changes in Creative Neurocognition. Poster presentation at the 2025 Conference of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity (SfNC 2025), Paris, France.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2024). Age increases vulnerability to agreement errors: an eye tracking study in Spanish. Poster presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Brisbane, Australia.
Miklashevsky, A., Reifegerste, J., García, A. M., Pulvermüller, F., Balota, D. A., & Ullman, M. T. (2024). The impact of aging and task on the processing advantage for action words. Poster presentation at the Embodied and Situated Language Processing Conference (ESLP), Berlin, Germany.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Lago, S., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2024). Aging increases agreement errors: Eye-tracking in older and younger adults. Poster presentation at the 2024 Architecture and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference (AMLaP 2024), Edinburgh, Scotland.
Buffington, J., Ullman, M. T., & Reifegerste, J. (2024). Recall, but not comprehension, of newly-learned vocabulary shows declines in aging: A role for hippocampal atrophy? Poster presentation at the 3rd Annual Georgetown University Medical Center Healthy Aging Symposium, Washington DC, USA.
Cardoso-Botelho, M., Reifegerste, J., Kleinmintz, O. M., Cortes, R. A., Ullman, M. T., & Green, A. E. (2024). The Impact of Aging on the Neurocognition of Creativity. Poster presentation at the 2024 Conference of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity (SfNC 2024), Toronto, Canada.
Miklashevsky, A., Reifegerste, J., García, A. M., Pulvermüller, F., Balota, D. A., & Ullman, M. T. (2023). As embodiment comes of age: A processing advantage for action words is modulated by aging and the task. Poster presentation at the 23rd Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP 2023), Porto, Portugal.
Russell, L. E., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2023). Why do we have such difficulty recalling people's names as we get older? A neurocognitive hypothesis. Poster presentation at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), San Francisco CA, USA.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Lago, S., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2023). Eye tracking agreement processing and attraction effects in the aging brain: A subject-verb agreement comprehension study in Spanish. Poster presentation at the XVI International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Vitória-Gasteiz, Spain.
Benítez-Burraco, A., Chen, S., Gaponov, S., Gil, D., Progovac, Lj., Reifegerste, J., Tatarinova, T., & Yuditha, T. (2023). Cognitive and linguistic correlates of societal variation: A quantitative analysis. Poster presentation at Protolang 8, Rome, Italy.
Cano Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Lago, S., Reifegerste, J., & Santesteban, M. (2022). Eye-tracking the bilingual brain. Poster presentation at the workshop “L2 sentence and discourse processing,” Cologne, Germany.
Bénitez Burraco, A., Cahuana, C., Gil, D., Progovac, L., Reifegerste, J., & Tatarinova, T. (2022). Cognitive and genetic correlates of a single macro-parameter of crosslinguistic variation. Poster presentation at the Joint Conference on Language Evolution, Kanazawa, Japan.
Zona, C. I., & Reifegerste, J. (2022). The weighting of visual-cue information during sentence comprehension across the lifespan. Poster presentation at the 2020 Cognitive Aging Conference, Atlanta GA, USA.
Russell, L. E., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). The neurocognition of proper name retrieval in aging. Poster presentation at the Georgetown University Undergraduate Research Conference, Washington DC, USA.
Miklashevsky, A., Reifegerste, J., Balota, D. A., & Ullman, M. T. (2021). The effect of aging on lexical processing is moderated by sensorimotor semantics. Poster presentation at the workshop “Grounded and Symbolic Representation in Language Processing,” Tübingen, Germany.
Reifegerste, J., Elin, K., & Clahsen, H. (2018). Morphological processing in aging bilinguals: Evidence from inflectional and derivational priming. Poster presentation at the 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Edmonton, Canada.
Johari, K., Reifegerste, J., & Ullman, M. T. (2017). Language impairment and improvement in Parkinson’s disease: what, when, and why. Poster presentation at the 9th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Baltimore, USA.
Reifegerste, J., Elin, K., & Clahsen, H. (2017). Dissociating derivational and inflectional priming: Evidence from older bilinguals. Poster presentation at the 10th International Morphological Processing Conference, Trieste, Italy.
Reifegerste, J., Johari, K., & Ullman, M. T. (2017). Morphological processing impairments in Parkinson’s disease: effects of regularity, disease progression, and sex. Poster presentation at the 10th International Morphological Processing Conference, Trieste, Italy.
Reifegerste, J., Hauer, F., & Felser, C. (2016). Attraction errors in aging: Subject-verb agreement in younger and older speakers of German. Poster presentation at the 22nd Architecture and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference (AMLaP), Bilbao, Spain.
Reifegerste, J., & Felser, C. (2015). Illusory licensing effects in young vs. older adults. Poster presentation at the Individual differences in language processing across the life span workshop, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Reifegerste, J., & Meyer, A. S. (2011). The influence of Age on the mental representation of polymorphemic words in Dutch. Poster presentation at the 13th Winter Conference of the Dutch Psychonomic Society (NVP), Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.

 

Academic Affiliations & Research Experience

2024 - present Adjunct Faculty,
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University, USA
2023 - present Assistant Professor (research track),
Director: Aging Brain & Cognition (ABC) Lab
Department of Neurology, Georgetown University, USA
2021 - 2022 Co-Director: Aging and Language projects,
Brain and Language Lab, Georgetown University, USA
2021 - 2022 Adjunct Teaching Faculty,
Free University Berlin, Germany
2019 - 2022 Scientific Staff (PI, "Eigene Stelle"),
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Germany
2018 - 2021 Visiting Researcher,
Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, USA
2018 - 2019 Postdoctoral Researcher,
Department of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany
2013 - 2017 Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Germany
2010 - 2013 PhD student,
Psychology of Language Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
2010 Research Assistant,
Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
(supervised by Andrea Gualmini)
2008 - 2010 Research Assistant,
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
(supervised by John E. Lydon and Donald M. Taylor)
2008 Research Assistant,
Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany
(supervised by Mitja Back and Sabine Korek)
2006 - 2007 Research Assistant,
Department of Comparative and Developmental Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
(supervised by Michael Tomasello)

 

Professional Service

Administrative

2025 - present Member of the Faculty Development Committee,
Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC, USA
2020 Member of the Dissertation committee for Laura Ciaccio,
University of Potsdam, Germany
2016 Member of the Dissertation committee for Sina Bosch,
University of Potsdam, Germany
2011 - 2013 PhD Representative,
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
2011 - 2013 Member of the Research Facilities Committee and the Intranet Committee,
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Scientific

2022 Session chair at Corpora for Language and Aging Research (CLARe5) conference, session “Constructing Age”
2015 - 2016 Guest editor for “The Mental Lexicon”, Special Issue “Linguistic perspectives on morphological processing”
2015 Conference Co-Organization “9th International Morphological Processing conference,”
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Germany
Editorial Board
2023 - present journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Ad-hoc reviewer:
Journals: Applied Psycholinguistics; Behavioral Research Methods; Bilingualism: Language and Cognition; Cognition; Frontiers in Communication; Frontiers in Psychology; Journal of Communication Disorders; Journal of Memory and Language; Journal of Psycholinguistics Research; Language, Cognition and Neuroscience; PLOS ONE
Grant proposals: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; ‘German Science Foundation‘); NSF Linguistics Program; ; US-Israel Binational Science Foundation
Conferences: Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (multiple years); Formal Descriptions of Slavic Languages 12.5; International Conference on the Mental Lexicon (multiple years)
 

 Teaching & Supervision

Spring 2026 Course “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level; INNS-6303),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2026 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level course “INNS-501 - Basic Neuroscience II”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2025 Course “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level; INNS-6303),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2025 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level course “INNS-501 - Basic Neuroscience II”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2025 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level course:
“HSCI 4973 - Human Science Sem/Capstone II”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Fall 2024 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level course “PPOL-4900 - Population Health: Opportunities and Challenges”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Fall 2024 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level course:
“HSCI 4972 - Human Science Sem/Capstone I”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2024 Course “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level; INNS-6303),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2024 Research Module “Language in the Aging Brain” (undergraduate-level course “ICOS 202 - Research Modules: Cognitive Science”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2024 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level course “INNS-501 - Basic Neuroscience II”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2024 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level course:
“BIOL 341 - Research Intensive Senior Experience (RISE)”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Fall 2023 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging” (graduate-level course “PPOL-4900 - Population Health”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Fall 2023 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level course:
“HSCI 3940 - Independent Study”,
“BIOL 341 - Research Intensive Senior Experience (RISE)"),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2023 Research Module “Language in the Aging Brain”
(undergraduate-level course “ICOS 202 - Research Modules: Cognitive Science”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2023 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging”
(graduate-level course “INNS-501 - Basic Neuroscience II”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2023 Lecture on “Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging”
(graduate-level course “AGHL-490-01 - An Aging World”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Fall 2022 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level course:
“BIOL 340/341/342 - Research Tutorial”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2022 Seminar course “Intro to Linguistics” (undergraduate level)
Free University Berlin, Germany
Fall 2021 Seminar course “Language research techniques” (undergraduate level)
Free University Berlin, Germany
Fall 2021 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level courses:
“BIOL 341 - Research Intensive Senior Experience (RISE)”,
”PSYC 402 - Research Experience-Based Learning (REBL)”,
”ICOS 391 - Senior Thesis in Cognitive Science”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2021 Research Tutorial course “Language across the lifespan”
(cross-listed undergraduate-level courses:
“BIOL 340 - Research Tutorial”,
”PSYC 402 - Research Experience-Based Learning (REBL)”,
”ICOS 302 - Research Tutorial in Cognitive Science”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Summer 2020 Lecture on “The Lexicon in Aging”
(graduate-level seminar “Words in the mind and brain”),
University of Potsdam, Germany
Spring 2020 Lecture on “Language and Aging”
(graduate-level seminar “Aging & Health”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2020 Lecture on “Language in the aging brain”
(graduate-level course “NSCI 523 - Brain and Language”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2019 Research Module on “Language and Aging”
(undergraduate-level course “ICOS202 - Research Modules: Cognitive Science”),
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Spring 2017 Lecture on “Morphology in neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease”
(graduate-level course “Neurolinguistics of Morphology”),
University of Potsdam, Germany
Post-docs: Joshua Buffington,
Brennan Gonering
PhD students: Kirill Elin (“Morphological processing at old age”; co-supervised with Harald Clahsen),
Aleksandra Trifonova ("Language processing in bilingual speakers"; co-supervised with Claudia Felser)
Masters students: Franziska Hauer (“Agreement attraction and aging”; co-supervised with Claudia Felser),
Marilena Tsopanidi (“Effects of ageing on Greek past tense inflection”; co-supervised with Harald Clahsen),
Agata Marcante ("The role of declarative memory in first-language attrition"; co-mentored with Antonella Sorace and Michael Ullman),
Blaine M. Coyle (no thesis),
Denas Kisonas (no thesis),
Aleksandra Trifonova (“Morphological processing across the lifespan: Evidence from German plurals”; co-supervised with Laura Ciaccio),
Mackenzie Brown (no thesis; 1st prize at annual cohort poster presentation)
Sparsha Muralidhara (no thesis; 1st prize at annual cohort poster presentation)
Cassandra Soccio (“The neural substrates of spatial navigation in aging”)
Sai Soumya Gudipudi (“The effects of musicianship on procedural memory”; 3rd prize at annual cohort poster presentation)
Nhyira Annan (“Does reading modulate age-related hippocampal decline?”)
Elisa Yanni (“Neurocognitive predictors of success in adult second language learning”)
Ella Bogomilsky (“Elucidating the hippocampal basis of word finding with high-resolution fMRI and Intracranial EEG”)
Kyra Chen
Sarah John
Undergrad thesis &
capstone students: 		Lauren Russell (“The neurocognition of proper names in aging”)
Jimin Lee (“How does APOE genotype affect the medial temporal lobe?”)
Mason Sermarini (“The effects of exercise on cognitive aging”)
Satvik Reddy
 

Research Grants

NIH R01
09/15/2026 - 09/14/2031
Can the pattern of lexical difficulties in healthy older adults predict amnestic mild cognitive impairment? (R01AG097411)
This project investigates lexical abilities in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and aims to reveal whether lexical deficits in healthy adults can prognostically predict who will go on to develop aMCI.
Role: Principal Investigator
Total costs: $3,770,513.

NSF Research Grant
09/15/2020 - 09/14/2023
The nature and emergence of lexical difficulties in aging adults (NSF BCS 1940980)
This project systematically examines the developmental trajectory of lexical abilities over the course of aging, from our 20s to our 80s, and the cognitive and neural bases of such changes, using behavioral and MRI measures.
Role: Co-PI
Total costs: $500,000.

German Science Foundation (DFG): Principal Investigator Position (“Eigene Stelle”)
11/01/2019 - 10/31/2022
The Effects of Cognitive Changes across the Adult Lifespan on Lexical and Grammatical Processing (411781424)
This large-scale study investigates the trajectories of morphological processing over the course of the lifespan (20s to 90s), and how these changes relate to changes in non-linguistic cognition.
Role: Principal Investigator
Direct costs: €330,000.

GUMC Partners in Research Award
07/01/2018 - 06/30/2019
How and Why Language Declines in Aging
This project tests how aging affects the learning and remembering of words, and how age-related lexical changes may be explained by concomitant changes to declarative memory.
Role: Co-Investigator
Total costs: $30,000.

 

Awards and Honors

2025 FY25 Research Recognition Award,
Georgetown University Medical Center, USA
2022 Conference travel grant,
Potsdam Graduate School, University of Potsdam, Germany
2021 Personnel Grant (to hire a post-bac student),
Potsdam Graduate School, University of Potsdam, Germany
2020 Conference travel grant,
Potsdam Graduate School, University of Potsdam, Germany
2015 - 2017 Recipient of annual Conference travel grant,
Potsdam Graduate School, University of Potsdam, Germany
2010 - 2013 PhD scholarship,
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, Germany
2010 Dean's Honour List (top 10% of graduating class at the Faculty of Arts in Spring 2010),
McGill University
2008 Study abroad scholarship,
German Academic Exchange Services (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD)

  

Major Areas of Research Interest

Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and Language, Aging, Language Production, Language Comprehension, Morphological Processing, Morphosyntax, Bilingualism, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Sex Differences