I am the leader of EAGLeLab, and hold a position of a senior research scientist at the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences. I also do some teaching at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.
In my research, with mebers of EAGLeLab or other collaborators, I study how the knowledge of language works in children and adults, and how children learn language. I am particularly interested in children’s knowledge of grammar, such as how children learn what nouns and verbs are, how these word types fit in the sentences, and how they can be inflected. The knowledge and development of language are related to many other topics in cognitive science, psychology or linguistics, so I get to contribute to projects addressing a number of research questions. In addition to the fundamental science questions, I also work on tools for assessment and evaluation of language and cognitive skills in children.
I got my PhD from the Child Langauge Doctoral Program at the University of Kansas, with Mabel Rice as my supervisor.
Selected publications
(for complete list, see ORCID, Google Scholar or ResearchGate.
Gerwien, J., Filip, M., & Smolík, F. (2024). Noun imageability and the processing of sensory-based information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(10), 2137-2150.
Smolik, F., & Chromá, A. (2023). About me, you and her: Personal pronouns are developmentally preceded by mental state language. Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 537-554.
Smolík, F., & Bláhová, V. (2022). Here come the nouns: Czech two-year-olds use verb number endings to predict sentence subjects. Cognition, 219, 104964.
Smolík, F., & Matiasovitsová, K. (2021). Sentence imitation with masked morphemes in Czech: Memory, morpheme frequency, and morphological richness. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(1), 105-120.
Smolík, F., & Bláhová, V. (2019). Czech 23-month-olds use gender agreement to anticipate upcoming nouns. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 178, 251-265.
Smolík, F. (2015). Word order and information structure in Czech 3-and 4-year-olds’ comprehension. First language, 35(3), 237-253.