Dept of. Linguistics and Basque Studies
Centro de Investigación Micaela Portilla Ikergunea
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
mikel.santesteban@ehu.eus
Phone: +34 945 01 3842
I received my B.A. degree in Basque Philology in 1999 at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. In 2000 I was awarded a PhD fellowship from the Basque Government and I enrolled in the Language and Cognitive Science PhD program at the University of Barcelona, where I received my PhD in 2006 with the thesis entitled Lexical representation and selection in bilingual speech production. In 2006 I started my post-doctoral career in the Language Cognition and Communication Research Group of the Department of Psychology (University of Edinburgh, UK), funded by the Spanish Government (2006-2007). In 2007 I was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship to work with Prof. Martin J. Pickering. Since January 2010 I have been working in The Bilingual Mind research group (Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU) as a Juan de la Cierva (2010-2013), as a Research Fellow (2013-2014), and as a Ramón y Cajal research fellow (2014-2019). Since 2020 I am a Permanent Research Fellow (see here my full CV).
RESEARCH INTERESTS
My research is focused on the cognitive mechanisms and representations involved in the process of language production. My most important research lines are the following:
- The production and comprehension of syntactic structures in both monolinguals and bilinguals, focusing on (a) the processing of agreement relations; and (b) the nature of syntactic priming effects;
- The language selection mechanisms during bilingual speech production.
I approach these issues by means of different experimental methods (e.g., RT measures, error elicitation tasks, ERPs) in several languages (e.g., Spanish, Catalan, Basque, English), both with monolingual and bilingual participants, and in both monologue and dialogue contexts.
Key words: Language production; Sentence production; Bilingualism; Language comprehension; Speech errors; Lexical access; Language selection. Agreement; Syntactic priming; ERPs.
PUBLICATIONS
Hatzidaki, A., Santesteban, M., & Navarrete, E. (2024). Illusory truth effect across languages and script. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/
Zimnukhova, S., Santesteban, M., & Zawiszewski, A. (2024). Subject relative clause preference in Basque: ERP evidence. Brain and Language, 258, 105475. https://doi.org/10.
Anna Hatzidaki & Mikel Santesteban (2024) Emotion effects survive non-standard orthographic representations. Cognition and Emotion, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Duñabeitia, J.A., Ferré, P., Fraga, I., & Santesteban, M. (2024). Editorial: Community series: Spanish Psycholinguistics. Frontiers in Psychology, 15:1375105. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1375105
Santesteban, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Baus, C. (Eds.) (2023). Bilingualism through the Prism of Psycholinguistics: In honour of Albert Costa [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 17]. John Benjamins. ISBN 9789027213969 https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.17
Santesteban, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Baus, C. (2023). Psycholinguistics and bilingualism through Prof. Albert Costa’s mind. In M. Santesteban, J. A. Duñabeitia, & C. Baus (Eds.) Bilingualism through the Prism of Psycholinguistics: In honour of Albert Costa [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 17]
(pp. 2-25). John Benjamins. ISBN 9789027213969 https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.17.int
Lorenzoni, A., Santesteban, M., Peressotti, F., Baus, C., & Navarrete, E. (2022). Language as a cue for social categorization in bilingual communities. PLOS ONE 17(11): e0276334. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276334
Duñabeitia, J.A., Baciero, A., Antoniou, K. et al. (2022). The Multilingual Picture Database. Scientific Data 9, 431 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01552-7
Hatzidaki A and Santesteban M. (2022). Emotional Attractors in Subject-Verb Number Agreement. Frontiers in Psychology, 13:880755. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.880755
Erdozia, K., Santesteban, M., & Zawiszewski, A. (Eds.) (2021) Bi hizkuntza garun bakarrean: euskal psikohizkuntzalaritzaren ekarpenak eta erronkak. Udako Euskal Unibertsitateak eta Euskal Herriko Unibertsitateak lankidetzan argitaratuta (UEUko ISBNa: 978-84-8438-800-5; EHUko ISBNa 978-84-1319-362-5). Bilbo. Pages: 184.
Santesteban, M. & Ugarte, M. (2021) Bi hizkuntza garun bakarrean: ¿Cómo controlamos zein hizkuntzatan hitz egin nahi dugun? In, K. Erdozia, M. Santesteban, & A. Zawiszewski (Eds.). Bi hizkuntza garun bakarrean: euskal psikohizkuntzalaritzaren ekarpenak eta erronkak. (pp. 89-110). Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea eta Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Bilbo.
Lorenzoni A, Santesteban M, Peressotti F, Baus C, Navarrete E (2021) Dimensions of social categorization: Inside the role of language. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0254513. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254513 (Registered Report Protocol)
Baus, C., Calabria, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., Hernández, M., Ivanova, I., Mahon, B., Martin, C., Navarrete, E., Rodríguez-Cuadrado, S., Romero-Rivas, C., Runnqvist, E., Santesteban, M., & Strijkers, K. (2021). Memories: Albert Costa’s legacy. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 58, 100967. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100967
Santesteban, M., Zawiszewski, A., & Hatzidaki, A. (2020). ERP indexes of number attraction and word order during correct verb agreement production. Brain and Language, 208, 104826. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104826 (open access article)
Baus, C., Santesteban, M., Runnqvist, E., Strijkers, K., & Costa, A. (2020). Characterizing lexicalization and self-monitoring processes in bilingual speech production. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 56, 100934. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100934
Santesteban, M., & Schwieter, J. W. (2020). Lexical selection and competition in bilinguals. In R. R. Heredia & A. B. Cieślicka (Eds.). Bilingual lexical ambiguity resolution (pp. 126-156). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781316535967.
Hatzidaki, A., Santesteban, M., & Duyck, W. (2018). Is language interference (when it occurs) a graded or an all-or-none effect? Evidence from bilingual reported speech production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21(3), 489-504. doi:10.1017/S1366728917000736
Santesteban, M.; Zawiszewski, A.; Erdocia, K.; Laka, I. (2017) On the Nature of Clitics and Their Sensitivity to Number Attraction Effects. Frontiers in Psychology, 8:1470.
Iraola-Azpiroz, M., Santesteban, M., Sorace, A., & Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (2017). Pronoun preferences of children in a language without typical third-person pronouns. First Language, 37, 168-185. doi: 10.1177/0142723716679799
Santesteban, M., & Costa, A. (2016). Are cognate words “special”? On the role of cognate words in language switching performance. In J. W. Schwieter (Ed.) Cognitive control and consequences of multilingualism (pp. 99-128). Ontario, Canada: John Benjamins. ISBN: 9789027243720
Zawiszewski, A., Santesteban, M. and Laka, I (2016). Phi-features reloaded: An ERP study on person and number agreement processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(3), pp. 601-626. doi: 10.1017/S014271641500017
Santesteban, M., Pickering, M.J., Laka, I., & Branigan, H.P. (2015). Effects of case-marking and head position on language production? Evidence from an ergative OV language. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 1175–1186. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2015.1065335
Ros, I.; Santesteban, M.; Fukumura, K.; Laka, I. (2015). Aiming at shorter dependencies: the role of agreement morphology. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 1156-1174. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2014.994009.
Iraola, M., Santesteban, M. & Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (2014). Discursive feature specification of the pronoun hura in child (L1 and L2) and adult Basque. In J. Costa, A. Fiéis, M. J. Freitas, M. Lobo, & A. L. Santos (Eds.) New Directions in the Acquisition of Romance Languages, Selected Proceedings of The Romance Turn V (pp. 134-157). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. (Preprinted version)
Hatzidaki, A., Jones, M.W., Santesteban, M., & Branigan, H.P. (2014). It’s not what you see; it’s the language you say it in. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 1233-1239. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2013.857782. (Preprinted version)
Martin, C.D., Strijkers, K., Santesteban, M., Escera, C., Hartsuiker, R.J., & Costa, A. (2013). The impact of early bilingualism on controlling a lately learnt language: An ERP study. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:815. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00815
Santesteban, M., Pickering, M.J. & Branigan, H.P. (2013). The effects of word order on subject-verb and object-verb agreement: Evidence from Basque. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 160-179. [www].
Laka, I., Santesteban, M., Erdocia, K., & Zawiszewski, A. (2012) The Basque language in the minds of native and non-native bilinguals. In Pello Salaburu & Xabier Alberdi (Eds.) The Challenge of a Bilingual Society in the Basque Country. Current Research Series No. 9. Reno: University of Nevada. pp. 157-172. ISBN: 978-1-935709-30-5.
Santesteban, M., Pickering, M. J., & McLean, J. F. (2010). Lexical and phonological effects on syntactic processing: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 347-366. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 3 citations).
Costa, A., Albareda, B. & Santesteban, M. (2008). Assessing the presence of lexical competition across languages: Evidence from the stroop task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 121-131. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 4 citations).
Costa, A., Santesteban, M., & Ivanova, I. (2006). How do highly proficient bilinguals control their lexicalization process? Inhibitory and Language-Specific Selection mechanisms are both functional. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 32, 1057-1074. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 53 citations).
Costa, A., & Santesteban, M. (2006). The control of speech production by bilingual speakers: Introductory remarks. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 115-117. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 4 citations).
Santesteban, M., Costa, A., Pontin, S., & Navarrete, E. (2006). The effect of word-frequency on lexical selection in speech production: Evidence from semantic homogeneous naming contexts. Cognitiva, 18, 75-84. [www] (pdf)
Santesteban, M., & Costa, A. (2006). Does L1 syntax affect L2 processing? A study with highly proficient early bilinguals. In Beatríz Fernández & Itziar Laka (eds.) Andolin gogoan. Essays in honour of Professor Eguzkitza. EHUko argitalpen zerbitzua, Bilbao, 817-834. (pdf)
Costa, A., Santesteban, M., & Caño, A. (2005). On the facilitatory effects of cognate words in bilingual speech production. Brain and Language, 94, 94-103. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 47 citations).
Costa, A. & Santesteban, M. (2004). Lexical access in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching in highly proficient bilinguals and L2 learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 491-511. [www] (pdf) (Scopus: 94 citations). Among the “Top 25 Hottest Articles” of Journal of Memory and Language in 2011 (7th position).
Costa, A. & Santesteban, M. (2004). Bilingual word perception and production: two sides of the same coin? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 253. [www] (pdf). (Scopus: 12 citations).
Selection of CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Hatzidaki, A., & Santesteban, M. (2021). Emotional attractors in subject-verb number agreement. Comunicación oral presentada en el 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Atenas, Grecia. (30 de agosto – 3 de septiembre).
Cano, V., Laka, I., & Santesteban, M. (2021). Eyetracking prediction and ungrammaticality detection in the healthy aging brain. Póster presentado en la Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP) Conference, París, Francia.
Santesteban, M., & Isasi-Isasmendi, A. (2021). The effect of language switching on syntactic processing. Comunicación oral presentada en el XV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Madrid, España. (22-25 de junio)
Hatzidaki, A., & Santesteban, M. (2021). Investigating the effect of a non-standard foreign script on emotional word processing. Comunicación oral presentada en el XV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Madrid, España. (22-25 de junio)
Cano, V., Laka, I., & Santesteban, M. (2021). Predictability and grammaticality detection in the healthy aging brain: an eyetracking study of sentence comprehension in older adult Spanish speakers. Poster presentado en el XV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Madrid, España. (22-25 de junio)
Cano, V., Laka, I., & Santesteban, M. (2021). Prediction and ungrammaticality detection: Young versus old adults. Comunicación oral presentada en The International Online Workshop on Language in Healthy and Pathological Aging, 29-30 April 2021 https://agelang.wordpress.com/
Santesteban, M., Lorusso, P., Hatzidaki, A., Laka, I., & Zawiszewski, A. (2019). Lexical predictability effects on gender and number agreement encoding reveal their differences. Oral communication at the conference Psycholinguistics in Iceland – Parsing and Prediction, Reykjavik, Iceland. (Download Abstract here)
Santesteban, M., Lorusso, P., Hatzidaki, A., Laka, I., & Zawiszewski, A. (2019). Lexical predictability effects on agreement encoding reveal the differences between gender and number features. Oral communication at the XIV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Tarragona, Spain. (Download Abstract here)
Santesteban, M. (2018) On the processing of agreement in a morphologically rich language: Basque. Invited talk presented at the Woche der baskischen Sprache (Basque Language Week) organized by the Institut für Romanische Philologie of the Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany.
GRANTS AND AWARDS
2022 – 2025: Principal Investigator (co-PI with Dr. Kepa Erdocia) of the research project entitled Cross-linguistic influence in language learning, processing and aging (CROSSLANGUAGING) (PID2021-124056NB-I00), sponsored by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Science and Innovation). (51.424€)
2020 – 2021: Member of the ACELERA Netword (Red Albert Costa sobre efectos de lengua extranjera relacionados con la aculturación; RED2018-102615-T; PI: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia) sponsored by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities). (15.000€)
2019 – 2021: Principal Investigator (co-PI with Dr. Kepa Erdocia) of the research project entitled Cross-linguistic activation effects in bilingual language processing and learning (PGC2018-097970-B-I00), sponsored by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities). (60.500€)
2015 – 2018: Principal Investigator of the research project entitled Prediction and agreement: Mechanisms of language processing (FFI2014-55733-P) , sponsored by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness). (70.000€)
2010 – 2013: Principal Investigator of the research project entitled Verb agreement encoding during language production and comprehension, sponsored by the European Commission: Marie Curie Reintegration grants. (45.000€)
2010 – 2013: Principal Investigator of the research project entitled Procesamiento de la concordancia verbal en la producción y la comprensión del lenguaje: Efectos de atracción de número [Verb agreement processing in language production and comprehension: number attraction effects], sponsored by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Science and Innovation). (30.000€)
January 2010 – December 2012: Full-time Juan de la Cierva research position awarded by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Science and Innovation).
October 2007 – September 2009: Full-time Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship awarded by the European Commission. (Final Activity Report – L2SYNTAXPROD)
December 2006 – September 2007: Full-time post-doctoral fellowship awarded by the Spanish Government (Ministry of Education and Science).
October 2000 – September 2004. Full-time pre-doctoral fellowship awarded by the Basque Government.
EDUCATION
2006. Ph.D in Cognitive Science & Language. Universitat de Barcelona. Thesis entitled Lexical representation and selection in bilingual speech production.
2003. Diploma en Altos Estudios (Master thesis) in Cognitive Science & Language. Universitat de Barcelona (UB).
2003. Diploma en Altos Estudios (Master thesis) in Linguistics. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
1999. B.A. in Basque Philology. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13 & 2013/14: Fundamentos y Principios de Psicolingüística y Neurolingüística (with Dr. Adam Zawiszewski), Master in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2016/17, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24: Advanced Course in Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics (with Dr. Kepa Erdocia), Master in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24: Metodología de la Investigación Lingüística, Master in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2011/12 & 2012/13: Applied Linguistics (with Dr. Adam Zawiszewski and Dr. Kepa Erdocia), Master in Linguistics and Basque Philology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2013/14; 2017/18 & 2018/19: Research Seminar on Language Processes, Master in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2015/16: Research Seminar in the Neurocognition of Language, Master in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
2015/16: Psikolinguistika, Grado en Estudios Vascos, UPV/EHU.
2016/17: Psicolingüística (with Dr. Kepa Erdocia), Grado en Estudios Vascos, UPV/EHU.
REVIEWER ACTIVITIES
Regular reviewer for the following ISI Journals: Journal of Memory and Language; Bilingualism: Language and Cognition; Cognition; Language, Cognition and Neuroscience; Acta Psychologica; Applied Psycholinguistics; Journal of Cognitive Psychology; Second Language Research; Memory and Cognition; Frontiers in Language Sciences (Frontiers in Psychology), among others.
Reviewer for the following research funding agencies: Spanish Agencia Nacional de Evaluación y Prospectiva (ANEP); French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR).de Evaluación y Prospectiva (ANEP); French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR).
