The Max Planck Institute shows the results of linguistic research

NIJMEGEN – The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen organized an open day for young and old on Saturday. In addition to lectures, there were all kinds of activities that taught visitors how the language works. The institute hopes to make science more accessible and at the same time show what funded research pays off.

Around the corner from the Radboud campus, you can walk through a brain, meet a social robot, and take on the role of a DNA detective. Visitors undergo some of these experiments to better understand how language works in our brains.

At the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, research focuses primarily on how people are able to develop language from genes and the brain. “We think it is important to share this because we are proud of what we do and feel we have something to give back to society. Science is subsidized by social money and we would like to give back what we we do with it and what it brings in,” reports Marjolein Scherphuis, communication manager.

Can you drive and talk at the same time?

There are different departments that have each carried out experiments and tests to introduce people to scientific research in a fun way.

For example, a room at the bottom of the building has been transformed into a simulator, in which people get behind the wheel and find themselves in a car simulation using special glasses. Here it is studied whether people can drive and talk at the same time without any problems. “The more difficult the road environment becomes, such as in fog or rain, the more difficult it becomes for the driver to formulate good sentences. Depending on the circumstances, sentences always have a different sentence structure,” says a researcher exploring the link between environment and sentence structure.

Open house now every two years

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is part of the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. In this only Dutch location, scientific research is carried out on language in the field of writing, speaking and gesture accompaniment. People who weren’t here today can look forward to another open day. This will now be held every two years.