About Me

Welcome! I am a postdoctoral language researcher at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) and a member of the Gogo Elebiduna and BASLA Linguistics research groups. My research lies at the intersection of psycholinguistics and cognitive aging, with a particular focus on how language is processed and maintained across the lifespan. I currently collaborate with Prof. Pedro Guijarro on the project Language Loss and End-State Acquisition, which investigates language decline and stabilization in late bilingualism.

To explore this topic, I use a wide range of statistical, behavioral, and experimental methods to better understand language processing, with a strong emphasis on eye-tracking and, more recently, electroencephalography (EEG) methods. I have also worked with a wide range of populations—including young and older adults, monolinguals, bilinguals, and currently, heritage speakers—to examine how age, individual differences and linguistic background influence sentence comprehension and syntactic processing.

I hold an International Ph.D. in Linguistics (Cum Laude) from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). My dissertation, Age-Related Differences in Language Processing: Eye-Tracking Sentence Reading Patterns in Spanish, was supervised by Dr. Mikel Santesteban and Prof. Itziar Laka. Prior to my doctoral studies, I earned a B.A. in Translation and Interpreting (University of Málaga, Spain), and several master’s degrees: in Legal Translation (University of Córdoba, Spain), Language Teaching (University of Alicante, Spain), and Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics (UPV/EHU, Basque Country)—an academic path shaped by my inherently curious and inquisitive nature, and a constant drive to learn and explore new disciplines.

Before entering academia full-time, I taught in the public secondary education systems in Spain and France, founded VCS Traducciones and worked as a freelance translator for institutions such as CSIC, FISABIO, and KONGSBERG MARITIME.

I am currently on the academic job market for the 2025–2026 cycle and open to research and teaching opportunities in linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and cognitive science.

Research

My research centers on fundamental questions about how language is processed across the lifespan and how predictive mechanisms support comprehension. How do humans anticipate upcoming words and structures during real-time language processing? To what extent are these mechanisms affected by healthy aging, and how are they shaped by lifelong linguistic experience and cognitive resources? To address these questions, I have so far combined behavioral and attentional methods (e.g., eye-tracking) with an increasing focus on neuroimaging techniques (EEG, fMRI, MEG) to investigate predictive processing at both lexical and morphosyntactic levels. While most of my work has so far focused on sentence reading in Spanish, I aim to extend these findings to typologically diverse languages in order to generate cross-linguistically robust conclusions.

1. Healthy aging

In the domain of healthy aging, my work examines how age-related changes in cognition interact with linguistic experience to shape predictive processing. Rather than assuming uniform decline, I investigate the balance between preserved abilities, potential improvements, and resource-driven limitations. My findings suggest that lexical prediction benefits more directly from accumulated linguistic experience, whereas morphosyntactic prediction is more constrained by working memory and attentional control. By combining eye-tracking evidence of real-time comprehension with behavioral data, I have shown that older adults’ prediction abilities depend not only on age but also on individual differences such as vocabulary knowledge and reading habits. Building on these insights, my future research will integrate fMRI, MEG, and EEG to capture the neural dynamics underlying predictive mechanisms, thus offering a more comprehensive view of performance and brain activity in aging. These efforts will also aim to determine when along the aging spectrum cognitive abilities begin to decline and how linguistic experience may offset such decline. In this regard, the study of older heritage speakers and late bilinguals offers a particularly compelling opportunity. Late bilinguals (e.g., Spanish speakers who immigrated to Latin America in adulthood) follow an aging trajectory similar to monolingual older adults, but their experience with Spanish grows more slowly. Heritage speakers, meanwhile, often process Spanish as a non-dominant language, with fewer resources and reduced literacy exposure, but richer oral language experience. Studying these populations will allow me to disentangle resource-based versus experience-based effects on predictive processing. My work on this topic has included so far:

• Cano-Sánchez, V., Laka, I. & Santesteban, M. (under review.) Predictive abilities in language processing in the healthy elderly brain: a focus on lexical and morphosyntactic processing. Journal of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience.
• Cano-Sánchez, V., Laka, I., Foucart, A. & Santesteban, M. (in prep.). Word anticipation across the lifespan: evidence from natural reading."

2. Bilingualism & sociolinguistic perspective

Beyond monolingual aging, I investigate how bilingualism modulates predictive processing. Lifelong management of two languages may reshape executive control and influence the balance between lexical and morphosyntactic prediction. Exploring these questions helps disentangle the interplay between cognitive resources and language experience, providing a broader understanding of how language processing adapts across diverse populations. Another strand of my research within this area has focused on sociolinguistic contexts, examining regional languages in Spain, such as Valencian, to study the patterns of language use and maintenance among the youngest populations. This perspective highlights the importance of considering not only bilingualism itself, but also the sociolinguistic environments in which it develops. My work on this topic has included so far:

• Benaiges, K.*, Santesteban, M. & Cano-Sánchez, V.* (in prep.) Does bilingualism shape predictive language processing? Evidence from lexical and morphosyntactic cues.
• Cano-Sánchez, V., Vida-Castro, M. & Villena-Ponsoda, J.A. (in prep.) A sociolinguistic study on the current situation of the Valencian language in Alicante, Valencian Community. First approach to linguistic uses and attitudes in Mutxamel. [A version of this study currently available at: https://riuma.uma.es/xmlui/handle/10630/15038]

3. Language and neurodegenerative diseases

While much of my work has focused on language in healthy aging, I am also deeply interested in how neurodegenerative diseases affect linguistic outcomes. In future studies, I plan to extend my research to conditions such as Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and aphasias, combining behavioral measures with fMRI, MEG, and EEG to examine both performance outcomes and the neural mechanisms underlying language decline. A particular focus will be placed on grammatical processing, which has been less studied in healthy aging but is critically affected in certain neurodegenerative conditions. For example, non-fluent progressive aphasia, characterized by prominent morphosyntactic difficulties, provides a unique opportunity to explore patterns that relate directly to the predictive mechanisms and individual differences identified in my thesis. This line of research will also allow me to investigate which aspects of linguistic experience and cognitive resources may serve as protective factors in pathological aging.

Media

2025: Article published at La Verdad: “The memory of Cristóbal so known as “Caíllo” inspires his granddaughther's dissertation” (Available here in Spanish).

2025: Opinion article. Alicante Plaza. “El idioma secreto del cerebro adulto: ¿anticipamos el lenguaje en la vejez?” (Available here in Spanish).

2025: Interview. EITB Radio Euskadi, “La mecánica del caracol: Lenguaje y envejecimiento” (Available here in Spanish ).

2025: Interview. ONDA CERO Bizkaia “Más de uno” (Available here in Spanish. From: 11:54-18:08).

2025: Article published at Archiletras: Journal of Language. Bi-monthly scientific magazine (Available here in Spanish).

2025: Interview at radio esRADIO Valencia:. “Language processing” (Available here in Spanish).

2024: Research coverage. Senior Class Magazine nº5, Spring. “How does our brain age?” (Available here in Spanish).

2023: Radio interview at ONDA CERO Vitoria, “La Brújula de Euskadi” (Available here in Spanish. From: 4.00).