Christian Kliesch
PhD Student (Alumni)
Lancaster University
A bit about Christian Kliesch
I am a PhD student at Lancaster University, where I investigate infants' understanding of communication, i.e. communication about communication. Before coming to Lancaster, I worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, also in Leipzig. I also hold an MSc in Evolution of Language and Cognition from Edinburgh, and an MA in Psychology from Glasgow.
My Role in LuCiD
I work on infants' understanding of ostensive communication. Ostensive communication acts as a second communicative channel that tells the listener that they are being communicated with. This is one of the key characteristics of human communication, as it can be used as a foundation for a complex, flexible communication system, such as human language. Therefore, studying how infants make use of ostensive communication may offer important insights on how human language develops ontogenetically.
Already from very early on, infants are sensitive to ostensive cues, such as direct gaze and infant directed speech. I am particularly interested in how infants use such cues to predict others actions and interpret them as meaningful. Furthermore, I am interested in how children transition from the use of fixed ostensive cues to become more flexible in their interpretation of signals as ostensive.
As part of my research, I study infants and children of 0-36 months using EEG measures.
LuCiD publications (9) by Christian Kliesch
Köster, M., Langeloh, M., Kliesch, C., Kanngießer, P., & Höhl, S. (2019). Neuronal dynamics of infants' understanding and learning from others' actions. SRCD Biennial Meeting, Baltimore, USA.
Kliesch, C. (2019). Parent-child interactions scaffold action segmentation in infancy and early childhood. The 7th Conference of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Kliesch, C., Hoehl, S., Reid, V., Parise, E. (2019). Ostensive signals contribute to the segmentation of actions in toddlers. Poster presented at the Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD19), Budapest, Hungary.
Kliesch, C., Reid, V., Theakston, A., Parise, E. (2018). Ostensive-referential communication modulates action interpretation at 9 months. Poster presented at the 21st biennial meeting of the International Congress of Infant Studies, Philadelphia, USA.
Kliesch, C., Reid, V.M., Theakston, A.L., Parise, E. (2017). Anticipation of familiar, unexpected and novel actions in ostensive and non- ostensive contexts in 7-month-old infants. Poster presented at the Lancaster Conference on Infant and Child Development, August 22– 25, 2017, Lancaster, UK.
O'Grady, C., Kliesch, C., Smith, K., Scott-Phillips, T (2015). The ease and extent of recursive mindreading, across implicit and explicit tasks. Evolution and human behaviour 36(4), 313-322
Kliesch, C., Reid, V. M., Theakston, A., Parise, E. (2016). Infants' understanding and learning of expected, unexpected and novel actions in pedagogical and non-pedagogical contexts. Presented at the LuCiD Mini Conference, Manchester, UK.
Kliesch, C., Reid, V. M., Theakston, A., Parise, E. (2016). Infants’ understanding of teleological actions after ostensive communication. (1) Budapest Summer School on Memory and Metarepresentation, Budapest, HU
Kliesch, C., Reid, V. M., Theakston, A., Parise, E. (2016). Infants’ understanding of teleological actions after ostensive communication. Lancaster Conference on Child Development, Lancaster, UK