Angela D. Friederici facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Angela D. Friederici
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| Born | 1952 (age 72–73) |
| Known for | First to report the early left anterior negativity (ELAN), a response to phrase structure violations in language, neurocognitive model of auditory language processing |
| Awards | Alfried Krupp Prize for Young Scientists of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation University of Mainz endowed professor (Johannes Gutenberg-Stiftungsprofessur) 2010 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuropsychology, Linguistics |
| Institutions | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (professor, director) |
Angela Friederici (born in 1952) is a leading scientist in Germany. She is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. She is known around the world for her work in neuropsychology and linguistics.
Neuropsychology is the study of how the brain affects our behavior and thoughts. Linguistics is the study of language. Dr. Friederici has written over 400 articles and book chapters. She has also edited 15 books about language, the brain, and how we think.
About Angela Friederici's Work
Angela Friederici was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1952. She studied language (linguistics) at universities in Germany and Switzerland from 1970 to 1976. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics in 1976.
She also studied how the mind works (psychology) starting in 1975. She got her degree in psychology in 1980. Later, she became a professor in cognitive psychology in Berlin in 1989.
In 1994, she helped start the Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in Leipzig. This institute later became the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. She is a founding director there.
Dr. Friederici also teaches at several other universities. Her main research focuses on how the human brain understands and uses language. She studies how we learn our first language and how we learn new languages.
She was the first to discover something called the early left anterior negativity (ELAN). This is a special brain signal. It shows up when our brains hear sentences that are grammatically incorrect. It's like our brain saying, "Hey, that doesn't sound right!"
In her 2017 book, Language in our Brain, she talked about the FOXP2 gene. Some people thought this gene was only for human speech. But Dr. Friederici explained that FOXP2 is also found in animals like monkeys, mice, birds, and fish. This means it's not just for speaking.
Awards and Honors
Angela Friederici has received many important awards for her work. Here are some of them:
- Alfried Krupp Prize for Young Scientists (1990)
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1997)
- Johannes Gutenberg-Stiftungsprofessur from the University of Mainz (2010)
- Carl Friedrich Gauss-Medal (2011)
- Wilhelm Wundt Medal (2018)
- Order of Merit of the Free State of Saxony (2018)
- Elected Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America (2019)
