Desiree Capel

Dr. Desiree Capel is a researcher and teacher at Utrecht University's Faculty of Humanities, Institute for Language Sciences (ILS). Her expertise spans First Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, Infant Language Research, Ethics, and Project Management. She leads the development of a Faculty-wide Research Portal and serves as secretary/member of the Faculty Ethics Assessment Committee (FEtC-H).

• PhD (2018): Research on sequential learning and dyslexia
• Project Leader: Faculty Research Portal integration
• Laboratory: Manages the Babylab for Language Research at Janskerkhof 13a

Her research investigates how infants and adults acquire language, focusing on sequential learning patterns, bilingualism, and developmental dyslexia. Studies examine transitional probabilities in sequences across domains and their implications for language acquisition and cognitive processing.

The Babylab for Language Research, part of ILS Labs, studies mother tongue acquisition, bilingualism, and dyslexia risk factors in infants. She also contributes to ethics governance as FEtC-H committee member and develops GDPR-compliant research infrastructure through the new Research Portal.

Publications demonstrate her work in developmental psychology (2008-2018), including cross-domain sequential learning studies (language/visuospatial), speech perception research in at-risk infants, and statistical learning mechanisms in early language development.