RTG 2906 Curiosity

Sarah Eiteljörge

I completed my BA in General Linguistics and English Studies at the University of Göttingen in 2014. For my bachelor thesis, I worked in the WortSchatzInsel with Prof. Dr. Susan Bobb and Prof. Dr. Nivedita Mani on a study on orthographical activation during auditory speech processing in adults. In 2014/2015, I attended the University College London and was awarded an MSc in Language Sciences with a specialization in children’s language acquisition. My research focused on the acquisition of pragmatic elements, namely scalar implicatures, in young children, and how contextual and structural components of these pragmatic elements can influence children's sharing behaviour. For my thesis, I was awarded the MSc Language Sciences Student Achievement Prize 2014/15.

In October 2015, I joined the Nivi’s lab as a PhD student. During the PhD, I investigated how specific actions can help learning novel words addressing cross-domain influences of word and action learning. Further, I was interested in how context, prosocial behaviour, and linguistic structures can affect the acquisition of semantic and pragmatic elements. Additionally, I was an associate of the DFG funded Research Training Group 2070 "Understanding of social relationships" and part of the PhD programme "Behaviour and Cognition". With this group, we also set up an exhibition at the Forum Wissen on our research.

After the PhD, I moved on to a lecturer position at Vienna University, taught courses on language acquisition and cognitive science to linguistics students, and worked together with Prof. Dr. Jutta Mueller to set up her lab. Since 2022, I am back in Göttingen as a postdoc. My research focuses on how the child's interests (and sometimes adults) influence their language learning.


" Deeds not Words? Dynamics in Word and Action Learning during Early Childhood"

Children grow up in a complex, multimodal environment and need to extract information from this environment to learn about the world. When caregivers interact with their children, they often use words and actions concurrently, and this might influence children’s processing of words and actions. In my thesis, we investigated children’s and adults’ learning of words and actions for objects in multimodal contexts to understand the interactions between the child and the environment during learning in early development. In my studies, I looked at the parallels of children’s learning of words and actions for objects, and how different presentations of actions can influence children’s and adults word learning. I also developed gaze-contingent studies where we investigated how children’s interest in the two modalities influences their learning, and found that children’s learning was improved when their interest in the modality was high. This was my first step towards children’s interests and their curiosity!


I'm curious about children's development, how they learn in interaction with others, and how their own curiosity and personality influences their learning. My main focus is early language learning, so how children acquire their first language. Children’s language learning is a key development in their life that influences their cognitive skills, their interactions with others, and their lifelong communication with others. How their own personality and curiosity influence learning is often neglected but has a strong impact on their personal learning trajectory. Sometimes, I also enjoy testing adults in the children’s paradigms which can provide us with a glimpse into the future where children’s development will move forward to. In the future, I would love for my research to inspire learning environments that can adapt to children's different personalities to facilitate learning according to their individual needs.



  • During my time in Göttingen, I contributed to several science communication events like an annual fair for families, Night of Science at the university, and an exhibition at the local science museum Forum Wissen.
  • Furthermore, I received a research grant to study child- and adult-directed speech (10.000€) and a grant to study the interaction between children’s personality and their word learning (6022€).