Dr Evelyne Mercure
Staff details
Evelyne is a lecturer in the department of psychology at Goldsmiths. She is interested in infant neurocognitive development and the role of early communicative experience in shaping this process. She uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERPs) and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to investigate how the infant brain develops functional specialisation for social stimuli, such as language, human voices and faces. She also uses eye-tracking and behavioural methods to clarify links between brain and cognitive development in infancy.
Evelyne's most recent work has focused on bilingual infants as well as hearing infants with deaf mothers. Because of their language and communicative experience, these infants represent a unique opportunity of studying experience-dependent plasticity in early development.
Academic qualifications
- BSc Speech and Language Therapy – Universite de Montreal 2002
- MSc Neuroscience – Universite de Montreal 2004
- PhD Psychology – Birkbeck, University of London 2008
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
Evelyne also has a strong interest in public engagement. In addition to offering science workshops for children and presentations for parents of bilingual children, she has also been involved as a science advisor to Baby Brains and as a school governor to Tidemill Academy.
Publications and research outputs
Article
Mercure, Evelyne; Bright, Peter; Quiroz, Isabel and Filippi, Roberto. 2022. Effect of infant bilingualism on audiovisual integration in a McGurk task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 217, 105351. ISSN 0022-0965
Mercure, Evelyne; Evans, S.; Pirazzoli, L.; Goldberg, L.; Bowden-Howl, H.; Coulson-Thaker, K.; Beedie, I.; Lloyd-Fox, S.; Johnson, M.H. and MacSweeney, M. 2020. Language experience impacts brain activation for spoken and signed language in infancy: Insights from unimodal and bimodal bilinguals. Neurobiology of Language, 1(1), pp. 9-32. ISSN 2641-4368
Pote, Inês; Wang, Siying; Sethna, Vaheshta; Blasi, Anna; Daly, Eileen; Kuklisova‐Murgasova, Maria; Lloyd‐Fox, Sarah; Mercure, Evelyne; Busuulwa, Paula; Stoencheva, Vladimira; Charman, Tony; Williams, Steven C. R.; Johnson, Mark H.; Murphy, Declan G. M. and McAlonan, Grainne M.. 2019. Familial risk of autism alters subcortical and cerebellar brain anatomy in infants and predicts the emergence of repetitive behaviors in early childhood. Autism Research, 12(4), pp. 614-627. ISSN 1939-3792
Bussu, Giorgia; Jones, Emily J. H.; Charman, Tony; Johnson, Mark H.; Buitelaar, Jan K.; Blasi, Anna; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Bedford, Rachael; Bolton, Patrick; Chandler, Susie; Cheung, Celeste; Davies, Kim; Fernandes, Janice; Gammer, Isobel; Garwood, Holly; Giraud, Jeanne; Gui, Anna; Hudry, Kristelle; Lieu, Michelle; Mercure, Evelyne; Lloyd-Fox, Sarah; Maris, Helen; O’Hara, Louise; Pickles, Andrew; Ribeiro, Helena; Salomone, Erica; Tucker, Leslie and Volein, Agnes. 2019. Latent trajectories of adaptive behaviour in infants at high and low familial risk for autism spectrum disorder. Molecular Autism, 10(1),
Mercure, Evelyne; Kushnerenko, Elena; Goldberg, Laura; Bowden‐Howl, Harriet; Coulson, Kimberley; Johnson, Mark H and MacSweeney, Mairéad. 2018. Language experience influences audiovisual speech integration in unimodal and bimodal bilingual infants. Developmental Science, 22(1), e12701. ISSN 1363-755X
Mercure, Evelyne; Quiroz, Isabel; Goldberg, Laura; Bowden-Howl, Harriet; Coulson, Kimberley; Gliga, Teodora; Filippi, Roberto; Bright, Peter; Johnson, Mark H. and MacSweeney, Mairéad. 2018. Impact of Language Experience on Attention to Faces in Infancy: Evidence From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilingual Infants. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(1943), ISSN 1664-1078
Tye, Charlotte; Farroni, Teresa; Volein, Ágnes; Mercure, Evelyne; Tucker, Leslie; Johnson, Mark H. and Bolton, Patrick F.. 2015. Autism diagnosis differentiates neurophysiological responses to faces in adults with tuberous sclerosis complex. Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 7(1), 33. ISSN 1866-1947
Blasi, Anna; Lloyd-Fox, Sarah; Sethna, Vaheshta; Brammer, Michael J.; Mercure, Evelyne; Murray, Lynne; Williams, Steven C.R.; Simmons, Andrew; Murphy, Declan G.M. and Johnson, Mark H.. 2015. Atypical processing of voice sounds in infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder. Cortex, 71, pp. 122-133. ISSN 0010-9452
Krishnan, Saloni; Leech, Robert; Mercure, Evelyne; Lloyd-Fox, Sarah and Dick, Frederic. 2015. Convergent and Divergent fMRI Responses in Children and Adults to Increasing Language Production Demands. Cerebral Cortex, 25(10), pp. 3261-3277. ISSN 1047-3211
Carey, Daniel; Mercure, Evelyne; Pizzioli, Fabrizio and Aydelott, Jennifer. 2014. Auditory semantic processing in dichotic listening: Effects of competing speech, ear of presentation, and sentential bias on N400s to spoken words in context. Neuropsychologia, 65, pp. 102-112. ISSN 0028-3932
Knowland, Victoria C.P.; Mercure, Evelyne; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Dick, Fred and Thomas, Michael S.C.. 2013. Audio-visual speech perception: a developmental ERP investigation. Developmental Science, 17(1), pp. 110-124. ISSN 1363-755X
Krishnan, Saloni; Alcock, Katherine J.; Mercure, Evelyne; Leech, Robert; Barker, Edward; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette and Dick, Frederic. 2013. Articulating Novel Words: Children's Oromotor Skills Predict Nonword Repetition Abilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56(6), pp. 1800-1812. ISSN 1092-4388
Tye, Charlotte; Mercure, Evelyne; Ashwood, Karen L.; Azadi, Bahare; Asherson, Philip; Johnson, Mark H.; Bolton, Patrick and McLoughlin, Gráinne. 2013. Neurophysiological responses to faces and gaze direction differentiate children with ASD, ADHD and ASD + ADHD. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 5, pp. 71-85. ISSN 1878-9293
Elsabbagh, Mayada; Mercure, Evelyne; Hudry, Kristelle; Chandler, Susie; Pasco, Greg; Charman, Tony; Pickles, Andrew; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Bolton, Patrick and Johnson, Mark H.. 2012. Infant Neural Sensitivity to Dynamic Eye Gaze Is Associated with Later Emerging Autism. Current Biology, 22(4), pp. 338-342. ISSN 0960-9822
Lloyd-Fox, S.; Blasi, A.; Mercure, Evelyne; Elwell, C. E. and Johnson, M. H.. 2012. The emergence of cerebral specialization for the human voice over the first months of life. Social Neuroscience, 7(3), pp. 317-330. ISSN 1747-0919
Blasi, Anna; Mercure, Evelyne; Lloyd-Fox, Sarah; Thomson, Alex; Brammer, Michael; Sauter, Disa; Deeley, Quinton; Barker, Gareth J.; Renvall, Ville; Deoni, Sean; Gasston, David; Williams, Steven C.R.; Johnson, Mark H.; Simmons, Andrew and Murphy, Declan G.M.. 2011. Early Specialization for Voice and Emotion Processing in the Infant Brain. Current Biology, 21(14), pp. 1220-1224. ISSN 0960-9822
Mercure, Evelyne; Kadosh, Kathrin Cohen and Johnson, Mark H.. 2011. The N170 Shows Differential Repetition Effects for Faces, Objects, and Orthographic Stimuli. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 6. ISSN 1662-5161
Deoni, Sean C. L; Mercure, Evelyne; Blasi, Anna; Gasston, David; Thomson, Alex; Johnson, Mark; Williams, Steven C. R. and Murphy, Declan G. M. 2011. Mapping Infant Brain Myelination with Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(2), pp. 784-791. ISSN 0270-6474
Mercure, Evelyne; Ashwin, Emma; Dick, Frederic; Halit, Hanife; Auyeung, Bonnie; Baron-Cohen, Simon and Johnson, Mark H.. 2009. IQ, fetal testosterone and individual variability in children's functional lateralization. Neuropsychologia, 47(12), pp. 2537-2543. ISSN 0028-3932
Mercure, Evelyne; Dick, Frederic; Halit, Hanife; Kaufman, Jordy and Johnson, Mark H.. 2008. Differential Lateralization for Words and Faces: Category or Psychophysics? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(11), pp. 2070-2087. ISSN 0898-929X
Mercure, Evelyne; Dick, Frederic and Johnson, Mark H.. 2008. Featural and configural face processing differentially modulate ERP components. Brain Research, 1239, pp. 162-170. ISSN 0006-8993
Further profile content
Featured publications
Grants and awards
Evelyne’s work has been supported by research funding from British and international organisations such as: ESRC, Wellcome Trust, UCL, Birkbeck, Canadian Institute of Health Research, Fond de la recherche en santé du Québec.
