Barbara Pomiechowska

Postdoctoral Fellow

Cognitive Development Center, Central European University

Thank you for stopping by to learn about my research. I use methods from cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology and psycholinguistics to investigate how the human mind develops and what are the building blocks of children’s incredible learning abilities.

One special thing about humans is that, unlike other animals, we spend lots of our time manipulating symbols, whether we talk, read books, enjoy TV shows, stroll around art galleries, use maps to get around, or think of our restaurant bills. Some of the complex combinatorial systems we put to use are difficult to learn (like maths or programming languages), others are acquired absolutely naturally during the first years of life (like natural language). My research aims to uncover how we learn combinatorial symbolic systems, how they foster our intelligence and learning, and how our thinking might look like without them. What kind of thoughts are entertained by babies who do not yet master language? Does symbolic combinatorial thought start with language acquisition or, perhaps, it is available before? If it is, then what form does it take? Find out more about my research in my publications and projects portfolio (that I am currently developing).

If you would like to learn more or collaborate, please do get in touch!

Short bio. I am currently a postdoctoral scientist at CEU Cognitive Development Center, where I work with Gergely Csibra. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow with Agnes Kovacs and Erno Teglas. I completed my PhD in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London under the supervision of Teodora Gliga. My dissertation looked at the interactions between word learning and concepts during the first year of life.

selected publications

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Nonverbal category knowledge limits the amount of information encoded in object representations. EEG evidence from 12-month-old infants

Pomiechowska, B., and Gliga, T.

Royal Society Open Science 2021

Abs Bib URL PDF Code Data Materials Supp

To what extent does language shape how we think about the world? Studies suggest that linguistic symbols expressing conceptual categories (‘apple’, ‘squirrel’) make us focus on categorical information (e.g. that you saw a squirrel) and disregard individual information (e.g. whether that squirrel had a long or short tail). Across two experiments with preverbal infants, we demonstrated that it is not language but nonverbal category knowledge that determines what information is packed into object representations. Twelve-month-olds (N = 48) participated in an electroencephalography (EEG) change-detection task involving objects undergoing a brief occlusion. When viewing objects from unfamiliar categories, infants detected both across- and within-category changes, as evidenced by their negative central wave (Nc) event-related potential. Conversely, when viewing objects from familiar categories, they did not respond to within-category changes, which indicates that nonverbal category knowledge interfered with the representation of individual surface features necessary to detect such changes. Furthermore, distinct patterns of γ and α oscillations between familiar and unfamiliar categories were evident before and during occlusion, suggesting that categorization had an influence on the format of recruited object representations. Thus, we show that nonverbal category knowledge has rapid and enduring effects on object representation and discuss their functional significance for generic knowledge acquisition in the absence of language.
@article{pomiechowska2021nonverbal, abbr = {E E G}, bibtex_show = {true}, title = {Nonverbal category knowledge limits the amount of information encoded in object representations. EEG evidence from 12-month-old infants}, author = {Pomiechowska, B. and Gliga, T.}, journal = {Royal Society Open Science}, volume = {8}, number = {3}, pages = {200782}, year = {2021}, selected = {true}, code = {https://github.com/bpomie/remember}, materials = {https://osf.io/b36cg/}, data = {}, pdf = {https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.200782}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200782}, publisher = {The Royal Society,}, supp = {} }
Eye tracking
Twelve-month-olds disambiguate new words using mutual-exclusivity inferences

Pomiechowska, Barbara, Bródy, Gábor, Csibra, Gergely, and Gliga, Teodora

Cognition 2021

Abs Bib URL PDF Code Data Materials Supp

Representing objects in terms of their kinds enables inferences based on the long-term knowledge made available through kind concepts. For example, children readily use lexical knowledge linked to familiar kind concepts to disambiguate new words (e.g., “find the toma”): they exclude members of familiar kinds falling under familiar kind labels (e.g., a ball) as potential referents and link new labels to available unfamiliar objects (e.g., a funnel), a phenomenon dubbed as ‘mutual exclusivity’. Younger infants’ failure in mutual exclusivity tasks has been commonly interpreted as a limitation of early word-learning or inferential abilities. Here, we investigated an alternative explanation, according to which infants do not spontaneously represent familiar objects under kind concepts, hence lacking access to the information necessary for rejecting them as referents of novel labels. Building on findings about conceptual development and communication, we hypothesized that nonverbal communication could prompt infants to set up kind-based representations which, in turn, would promote mutual exclusivity inferences. This hypothesis was tested in a looking-while-listening task involving novel word disambiguation. Twelve-month-olds saw pairs of objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and heard familiar kind labels or novel words. Across two experiments providing a cross-lab replication in two different languages, infants successfully disambiguated novel words when the familiar object had been pointed at before labeling, but not when it had been highlighted in a non-communicative manner (Experiment 1) or not highlighted at all (Experiment 2). Nonverbal communication induced infants to recruit kind-based representations of familiar objects that they failed to recruit in its absence and that, once activated, supported mutual-exclusivity inferences. Developmental changes in children’s appreciation of communicative contexts may modulate the expression of early inferential and word learning competences.
@article{pomiechowska2021twelve, abbr = {Eye tracking}, bibtex_show = {true}, title = {Twelve-month-olds disambiguate new words using mutual-exclusivity inferences}, author = {Pomiechowska, Barbara and Br{\'o}dy, G{\'a}bor and Csibra, Gergely and Gliga, Teodora}, journal = {Cognition}, pages = {104691}, year = {2021}, publisher = {Elsevier}, selected = {true}, code = {https://github.com/bpomie/mutex}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027721001104}, pdf = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/reader/pii/S0010027721001104/pdf}, materials = {}, data = {https://github.com/bpomie/point/tree/master/data}, supp = {https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0010027721001104-mmc1.pdf} }