Dr. Maouene

Josita Maouene
Psychology Department
Grand Valley State University
1, Campus Dr. AuSable Hall, room 2213
Allendale, MI 49401

Office Phone: (616) 331-3369
e-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Maouene obtained her BA and MA in Social Sciences (1984, 1986) and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2002). She was an associate researcher in the cognitive development lab of Dr. Linda Smith, Bloomington, IN, USA from 2003-2009. Her teaching experience is in child development and research methods and her research focuses on early English verb and noun semantics and their relation to the perceptual and motor systems. She uses associations, corpora, networks, and in collaboration fmri techniques.  She is currently collaborating to establish crosslinguistic data about body parts and early verbs in Hebrew, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu Dakkini and Telugu (language of the South of India), both in children and adults. 

About Us

Our lab has two locations. One downtown campus of Grand Rapids, 301 Fulton street  in the Eberhard Center (EC 104). This facility is mainly used to host parents and children who volunteer to participate in our studies.

Our second location is situated on the Allendale campus (AuSable Hall, ground floor) and is composed of an entire floor of the psychology department. The GVSU undergraduate students of the psychology department get a unique opportunity to see research in action.

In the research process I am helped by undergraduate research assistants who volunteer their time to learn how to run all aspects of the research from its conception until its realization. 

List of Research Assistants

Refereed Publications

Maouene, Josita, Sethuraman, Nitya, Uziel-Karl, Sigal and Hidaka, Shohei. "The associative system of early-learned Hebrew verbs and body parts: a comparative study with American English" Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 34, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2022-0038

Boyer, T. W., Maouene, J., & Sethuraman, N. (2017). Attention to body-parts varies with visual preferences and verb-effector associations. Cognitive Processing, 18, 195-203. doi: 10.1007/s10339-017-0792-y

Maouene, J. Sethuraman, N. & Maouene, M. (2016) Contingencies between verbs, body parts and argument structures in Maternal and Child Speech: A corpus study. Language and Cognition, 8, 237-282. doi:10.1017/langcog.2014.48

Maouene, J., Sethuraman, N., Laakso, A., Maouene, M. (2011). Body region correlates of abstract and concrete verbs in early 

child language. Cogntion, Brain, Behavior. An interdisciplinary journal, XV (4,) 449-484.

Maouene, J., Laakso, A., & Smith, L.B. (2011). Object associations of early-learned “light” and “heavy” English verbs. First Language, 31, 109-132.

Hills,T., Maouene, J., Riordan, B. & Smith, L., B. (2010). Early Word Learning: Contextual Diversity and the Associative Structure of Adult Language. Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 259-273.

Harman James, K., & Maouene, J. (2009). Auditory verb perception recruits motor systems in the developing brain: an fMRI investigation. Developmental Science 12:6, F26-F34.

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L., B. (2009). Early semantic Networks: Preferential Attachment or Preferential Acquisition? Psychological Science, 20(6):729-339. 

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L., B. (2009). Categorical Structure among shared features in networks of early-learned nouns. Cognition, 112, 381-396.

Maouene, J. Hidaka, S. & Smith B. L. (2008) Body parts and early-learned verbs. Cognitive Science,32:7, pp.1200-1216.

Refereed Published Conference Proceedings

Brooks, P. Maouene, J., Sailor, K. & Seiger-Gardner, L. Modeling the semantic networks of school-aged children with specific language impairment and their typical peers. BUCLD 41 Proceedings, Cascadilla Press, 2017.

Maouene, J., Laakso, A., & Smith, L.B. Distribution of object types of ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ early-learned English verbs. Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-2010), Ann Arbor, MI, August 16-19, 2010.

Maouene, J., Sethuraman, N., Maouene, M. & Smith, L.B. An embodied account of argument structure development, Linguistics Society (BLS) 36 Conference, UC Berkeley, February 6-7, 2010.

Hills T., Maouene, J., Riordan, B., & Smith, L.B. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Amsterdam, NL, July 29-August 1, 2009. Contextual Diversity and the Associative Structure of Adult Language in Early Word Learning

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L.B Categorical Structure in Early Semantic Networks of Nouns. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Washington, DC, July 23-26, 2008. 

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L.B. Is there Preferential attachment in the Growth of Early Semantic Nouns Networks? Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Washington, DC, July 23-26, 2008. 

Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., Maouene, M., & Smith, L., B. Body parts and early-learned verbs in Japanese and English. Proceedings of the general session, at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Krakow, Poland, July 15-20th, 2007.

Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., & Smith, L., B. Body parts and the first 100 verbs. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Talk Session 7-29-3 on Development, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 26-29, 2006.

Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., & Smith, L., B. Body parts and early acquired verbs : Evidence from children and adults. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Development and Learning, Talks Session II on The Dynamic Field Approach to Embodied Cognition : Integrating insights from Babies, Brains and Bots, Bloomington, Indiana, May 31 to June 3, 2006.

Conferences and Symposiums

Uziel-Karl S., Maouene, J. & Sethuraman, N. The relation between verbs, argument structure frames and embodiment. Talk given at the Haifa Language Forum, The Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center, Haifa University, Israel (November, 2012).

Maouene, J., Kuwabara, M. , Freer, D., Maouene, M. & Smith, L. B. , Society for Research in 

Child Development, "Basic Emotions and Early-learned English Verbs," Montreal, Canada. 

(April 1, 2011).

Maouene, J. (Presenter & Author), Society for Research in Child Development, "On the bi-directionality of verb learning," Montreal, Canada. (April 1, 2011).

Maouene, J., Sethuraman, N., Harman James, K. Maouene, M. & Smith, L.B. Correlating Body Experiences, Knowledge of Verbs, and the Development of Argument Structure. 2010 CSDL / ESLP joint meeting, September 16-19, University of California, San Diego.

Maouene, J., Sethuraman, N., Maouene, M. & Smith, L.B. An embodied account of Argument structure development, Linguistics Society (BLS) 36 Conference, UC Berkeley, Saturday, February 6, 2010 to Sunday, February 7, 2010.

Maouene, J., Sethuraman, N., Maouene, M. & Smith, L.,B. Correlations Between Body Parts and Types of Argument Structure. Society for Research in Child Development, 2009 SRCD Biennial Meeting, in Denver, Colorado, April 2-4, 2009.

Harman James, K. & Maouene, J. Neural Correlates of Verb Processing in the Developing Brain. Society for Research in Child Development, 2009 SRCD Biennial Meeting, in Denver, Colorado, April 2-4, 2009.

Organization and chair position of a symposium. The participants were Asifa Majid (Max Planck, NL), Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck, NL), Karen Harman James (Child neuropsychology, Bloomington) and Josita Maouene:” Homologies between Relational Language and Bodily Action: First Steps into an Embodiment Account of Meaning”. Society for Research in Child Development, SRCD Biennial Meeting, in Denver, Colorado, April 2-4, 2009.

Maouene, J., & Smith, L., B. The body, the hands and early verbs. Talk accepted for the symposium on Meaning for Hands at the 2007 Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child development, Boston, March 29th-April 1st, 2007.

Posters Presented with Proceedings

Hills, T., Maouene, J. Riordan, B. & Smith, L. Developing Early Semantic Networks And The Associative Structure Of Child Directed Speech. ? Proceedings of the 50th Annual Conference of the Psychonomic Society, Boston,MA, November 19-22, 2009.

Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., & Smith, L., B. A developmental trajectory of the granularity of early-learned verbs clustered by body parts. Poster presented at the 7th International Conference on Development and Learning , Monterrey, CA, August 9 to 12, 2008.

Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., & Smith, L., B. Body-part categories of early-learned verbs: Different granularities at different points in development. Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Development and Learning. Monterrey, CA. Aug 9-12, 2008.

Posters

Maouene, J. & Maouene, M. Climax, intention and goal spotting in sequences of others’ actions. Poster presented at the X. Dubrovnik Conference on Cognitive Science, Communication, Pragmatics and Theory of Mind, 24 May – 27 May 2018, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Maouene M., Maouene J., & Canada K. Letting clusters and paths emerge from early semantic hypernetwork structure of features and their nouns. Poster presented at the

WILD - Workshop on Infant Language Development, June 20th-22nd, 2013, Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain.

Maganti M.L., Maouene, J., Witherspoon, T. Collinge A., Notter, R. & Nesheim, M. Contingencies between verbs, body parts, and argument structure in Maternal and Child Speech: A corpus study in Telugu. Poster presented at the WILD - Workshop on Infant Language Development, June 20th-22nd, 2013, Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain.

Maouene J., Sethuraman, N. & Maouene, M. Correlations of action words, body parts and argument structure in maternal and child speech. Poster accepted at the Early Language Acquisition-ELA-2012 Conference, Lyon, France, December 5-7, 2012.

Maouene J, Sethuraman, N. & Maouene, M. Body parts correlates of early abstract and concrete verbs. Poster accepted at the 2012 International Conference on Infant Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 7-9, 2012.

Maouene, J. & Smith, LB. How toddlers map common transitive English verbs to pictured events: An early dependency on common object. Poster accepted at the XXVIth International Conference on Infant Studies, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, March 11-14, 2010.

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L.B. Alternative Models of Network Growth: Preferential Attachment, Preferential Acquisition, and the Lure of the Associates in Early Word Learning". Paper presented at the 1st ICC International Conference on Network Modeling and Economic systems. ISEG, Lisbon, October 9-11, 2008.

Hills T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L.B. Preferential Acquisition not Attachment in the Development of Children’s Semantic Networks. Talk presented at the 5th Conference on Applications of Social Network Analysis, ASNA 2008, University of Zurich, 12-13 September 2008.

Maouene, J., Maouene, M., & Smith, L., B. Set operators for superordinate category machine learning. Poster member accepted at the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 26-29, 2006.

Maouene, J. How do children build the meaning of Verbs? Grounding verb meanings in body parts, objects and contact. Poster presented at the 2005 Biennale meeting of the Society for Research in Child development, Session of Processes in Lexical learning, use, and Comprehension, Atlanta, May 2005

Undergraduate Talks and posters

Jackson, A., Wentworth, G., Guthrie A., Hubbard, S., & Maouene, J. Co-Occurrences Between Verbs and Body Parts in Speech Between Parents and Children. Poster presented at the SSD, Student Scholars Day, Allendale, MI, USA, April 8, 2015.

Canada, K., & Maouene, J. Adapting a meta-analysis at the undergraduate level. Poster presented at the SSD, Student Scholars Day, Allendale, MI, USA, April 9, 2014.

Witherspoon, T., Woods, K. & Maouene, J. Verbs, Frames, Body parts and Conceptual Meanings in Maternal and Child Speech. Poster presented at the SSD, Student Scholars Day, Allendale, MI, USA, April 9, 2014.

Nesheim, M., Witherspoon, T. & Maouene, J. Body Parts, Visuablility and Directionality Judgments on 88 Verbs. Poster presented at The Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference on April 14, 2013.

Canada K., Collinge A., Maouene, M. & Maouene, J. Data mining a hypernetwork of features of early-learned nouns to find nested and overlapping categories. Comparison with the binary network3 and the clique percolation method

SSD, Student Scholars Day, April 10, 2013, Allendale, MI, USA

Nesheim M., Witherspoon, T. Notter, R. & Josita Maouene, Department of Psychology @GVSU & Jeremy Christianson, J. & Sango Otieno, S., Department of Statistics@GVSU. Contingencies Between Verbs, Body Regions, Directionality and Visuability

SSD, Student Scholars Day, April 10, 2013, Allendale, MI, USA

Nesheim, M., Sepsey, A. Maouene, M. & Maouene, J. Body parts correlates of early-learned verbs in children. Talk presented at the Midwestern Psychological Conference, May 3-5, 2012, Chicago.

Book Chapter

​Smith, L., Maouene, J., & Hidaka, S. (2007). The body and children's word learning, in J. M. Plumert & J. Spencer (Eds.), Emerging landscapes of mind: Mapping the nature of change in spatial cognitive development. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thesis

Maouene, J. (2002). Role et fonctionnement du prototype image dans le development de la categorization, Etude chez des enfants de 18 a 64 mois. Manuscript de these non publie. Universite de Lausanne.

Additional Links

http://www.maouene.info/
https://www.gvsu.edu/psychology/josita-maouene-159.htm
Downtown Lab: Lab: 301 W. Fulton Street; 104 Eberhard Center
Articles: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Josita_Maouene