About Me

Hello! I’m a developmental scientist currently working as assistant professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. I run research projects with infants, children, and adults using a range of behavioral and neuroscientific methods, and below you can find more details about this work and resulting publications. I’ve been lucky enough to live and work in quite a few different places in Europe, ranging from the big and bulky to the small and seasidey. If we are interested in the same things, or you want to find out more about my work, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Research Statement

I’m interested in the variability inherent in cognitive development during infancy and early childhood. In particular, I explore how shyness, a component of children’s temperament, shapes their attentional and language processing. The behavioural profile of shyness is driven by a physiological reactivity in response to novelty. While we know that shy children generally speak less, my work argues that the relation between shyness and language development runs deeper than a reluctance to respond. Instead, my work demonstrates that the cognitive processes underlying language learning are modulated by the child’s shyness, meaning that shyness could be a profound individual difference in children’s cognitive processing, explaining their reduced language use. By examining these relations, I hope to better illuminate the mechanisms of early cognitive development of all children, by taking into account important individual differences in their biological and neurological functioning.

Academic Positions

Assistant Professor

2024-present
Section Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University

Lecturer

2022 - 2024
Section Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 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
Infancy, 1-17. (2024)
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.

Funded Projects

NWO (Dutch Research Council) Open Competition SSH Grant
October 2023 to October 2024

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