About Me

Hello! I’m a developmental psychologist currently working as a lecturer at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. I run research projects with infants and adults using both eye-tracking and EEG methodologies, and below you can find more details about this work and resulting publications. When not working hard, I can usually be found wandering aimlessly around Aachen and the local area.

Research Statement

I’m fascinated by the cognitive processes that underlie our action and language understanding. While speech and action share many similarities in terms of structure and execution, we still have a long way to go before we can understand the relation between the cognitive processes that drive processing of these two streams of information. Taking a developmental and individual-differences approach, my research aims to disentangle and specify the mechanisms that underlie action and language processing during infancy and beyond.

Academic Positions

Lecturer

2022 - present
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University

Postdoctoral Researcher

2016 - 2022
Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Potsdam

DFG-funded research unit “Crossing the Borders.”

Education

PhD in Psychology

2012 - 2016
Lancaster University

Title of thesis: “Temperament and early word learning: The effect of shyness on referent selection and retention”

  • Supervised by Gert Westermann and Katherine Twomey
  • Examined by Melissa Allen and Larissa Samuelson

BSc in Psychology

2009 - 2012
University of Sussex

Publications

click on title for pdf

Matt Hilton, Katherine E. Twomey & Gert Westermann
Language Development Research, 3(1), 156-181. (2023)
Matt Hilton, Isabell Wartenburger, Julius Verrel & Birgit Elsner
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44, 1420-1426. (2022)
Nils F. Tolksdorf, Franziska E. Viertel, Matt Hilton, Kristie L. Poole & Sarah C. Kucker
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44, 22-23. (2022)
Matt Hilton, Isabell Wartenburger & Birgit Elsner
Neuropsychologia, 159, 107916. (2021)
Matt Hilton, Romy Räling, Isabell Wartenburger & Birgit Elsner
Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1566. (2019)
Matt Hilton, Katherine E. Twomey & Gert Westermann
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 134 - 145. (2019)
Matt Hilton & Gert Westermann
Journal of Child Language, 44, 1394 - 1412. (2017)

Book Chapters

Katherine E. Twomey & Matt Hilton
In S. Hupp, J. D. Jewell, D. T. L. Shek, & Y. Leung (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development (Vol. 7). Wiley. (2019)

Conference Talks

Using eye-tracking to measure individual differences in cognitive functions during infancy and early childhood
Matt Hilton, Jie Ren, Silvana Poltrock & Barbara Höhle
3rd Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, Lancaster, UK. 2018.
The case of the frightful fliwa: How emotional cues during labeling affect children's word learning
Matt Hilton, Julia Brase, Gert Westermann & Nivedita Mani
2nd Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, Lancaster, UK. 2017.
FaceTime: Shy children’s increased attention to faces and its effect on word learning
Matt Hilton, Katherine E. Twomey & Gert Westermann
1st Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, Lancaster, UK. 2016.
Shyness can affect children's performance during fast-mapping tasks
Matt Hilton & Gert Westermann
Postgraduate and Academic Researchers in Linguistics at York conference, York, UK. 2014.

Teaching

Entwicklungsdiagnostik [Developmental Diagnostics]
Winter Term 2021/22, University of Potsdam
Undergraduate seminar
Theories of Early Human Cognitive Development : Milestones of the Last 30 Years
Winter Term 2021/22, University of Potsdam
Postgraduate seminar
Empirisch-Experimentelles Praktikum [Experimental Practical]
Summer Term 2021, University of Potsdam
Undergraduate lab-based practical course