Itziar Lozano Sanchez

I am a developmental psychologist. I research (1) how infants’ early perceptual and attentional abilities scaffold their later language development, (2) the relative roles of language experience and brain maturation in word learning during toddlerhood, and (3) the role of sex-specific mechanisms that may protect language acquisition in typically and atypically developing infants, with a focus on infants at increased likelihood for autism. I am currently a visiting researcher at the DiVE lab.

I am a developmental psychologist. I completed my B.A. in Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2012) and my M.A. in Cognitive Science and Language at Universitat de Barcelona (2013). During my PhD (Autonomous University of Madrid, 2021), I explored the development of early key mechanisms to process audiovisual speech in infants at high risk for developing ASD during the first year of life. During those predoctoral years, I was a visiting researcher at the Infant Development Lab, Miami, USA, (Sept-Nov 2016) and at the Neurocognitive Development Lab, Warsaw, Poland, (March-May 2018). After my PhD, I moved to the University of Warsaw (Dpt. Cognitive Psychology and Neurocognitive Science) to co-lead an international multi-lab EEG study (across UW, Multiling, and OsloMet) on the role of language exposure and brain maturation in semantic integration in bilingual toddlers.

My main research interests are threefold. First, I research how infants’ early perceptual and attentional abilities scaffold their later language development, especially language development. Second, I study the relative roles of language experience and brain maturation in word learning during toddlerhood. Third, I investigate the role of sex-specific mechanisms that may protect language acquisition in typically and atypically developing infants, with a focus on infants at an increased likelihood for autism.

I am currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Neurocognitive Development Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, where I lead the project ‘Early sex differences in attention to the articulating mouth as a female protective candidate mechanism in Autism Spectrum Disorder´ (SONATINA 7, Project no. 2023/48/C/HS6/00264, funded by the National Science Centre of Poland). As part of a secondment of this grant, I am a visiting researcher at the DiVE lab (from Jan. to Jul. 2025) to analyze potential sex differences in visual attention to the mouth of talking faces in a large 'live' eye-tracking dataset of infants at elevated likelihood for autism.