Barbara Höhle, psycholinguist and Scientific Executive Director of the 2024 Assembly, on her university in the excellence competition, research with babies and overcoming language barriers.   

Professor Höhle, as Vice President you are responsible for research, academic qualification phase and equal opportunities at the University of Potsdam. What is particularly important to you in this broad field?
All three areas are important and we are active in all of them. In recent years, for example, we have expanded our tenure-track offer to become more attractive for researchers in early career phases. We now appoint younger colleagues to W1 and W2 professorships early on, where they can then prove themselves. The topic of equal opportunities has always been close to my heart and it is also becoming increasingly important with the increasing diversity and internationality of our students and employees. Most of my time in the last few months has been spent on research. Together with researchers from our faculties, we have developed three applications for research clusters with which we are participating in the university excellence competition. 

What are the topics?
One proposal focuses on biodiversity change and the role of the individual in an ecosystem. The next is about the dynamics of cognition and behaviour, the connections between language and cognition, development, learning and motivation. The third proposal focuses on water extremes with serious consequences: Here, for example, the focus is on predictability and risk minimisation in floods. In all three concepts, cooperation with non-university research institutions in the region also plays a role.  

Why were the topics described selected?
They correspond to the research priorities of our university. In 2019, the university has established four focus areas: Earth and Environmental Sciences, Evolutionary Systems Biology, Cognitive Sciences and Data-Centric Sciences. After four years of operation, the focus areas will be evaluated by external reviewers this autumn. I am very confident about the outcome. Because the performance of our university is enormous, as we have just seen again in the preparation of the cluster proposals.

© Ernst Kaczynski

Campus Neues Palais, near the Sanssouci Palace Park: the offices of the university administration are located here.

What will happen with the submitted cluster proposals?
In February of next year, we’ll find out whether we can move on to the next round and prepare full proposals. Whether we receive funding for excellence will be decided in May 2025. 

And if it doesn’t work out?
That can happen, and you simply have to expect it in science. If it does, we will pick ourselves up again and continue. We’ll stick to the research projects we’ve designed now in one form or another and look for new funding pots if we have to. 

How much time do you have as Vice-President for your own research?
The work in the Presidium is considered a sideline, but at the moment I actually spend more time on it than on my scientific tasks. 60 per cent committee work and other tasks in the Presidium, 40 per cent teaching and research – that’s how I estimate the ratio. 

You have been a professor of psycholinguistics with a focus on language acquisition at the University of Potsdam since 2004. What exactly is your research about?
The focus is on the question of how children learn their mother tongue. What do children bring into the world? What part does the environment play? But also: Why do some children have difficulties acquiring their mother tongue? My team and I try to find answers to questions like these. 

What results do you come to?
One of our findings, for example, is that children as young as six months have a distinct sense of speech melody and rhythm. We were able to observe this in a comparative study with German and French babies, to whom we played first stressed words, which are characteristic of German, and final stressed words, which are common in French. Examples of such words are “merci” and “danke” or “tulipe” and “tulip”.  It was clear that the German babies paid more attention to first stressed words than to final stressed words, whereas this was not the case with the French babies.  From this we can see that children have already recognised certain characteristics of their mother tongue at a very young age. 

It seems reasonable to assume that your research can have practical significance. Is that true?
Yes, our findings can be used for paediatric diagnostics. For example, we have found in our research that babies who recognise certain patterns, such as melody and rhythm, of their mother tongue as early as five months of age have better language skills than less adept peers by the age of five. This shows that indications of a risk for language acquisition can be found at a very early age, so that early countermeasures can be taken.  The earlier this happens, the better, because the gap between more and less linguistically competent children widens over time.

© Karla Fritze

Golm Campus: One of the largest science parks in the region has been created here in a rural setting. The BabyLAB, which Barbara Höhle helped to build, is located here.

Many children today grow up multilingual. Is that an advantage or rather a disadvantage?
We see that young children can cope very well with several languages and also master them well. Sometimes words from one language may be seamlessly integrated into the other, but that is not a sign of chaos in the mind. The 1970s thesis that children from multilingual families are semi-lingual, i.e. that no language is learned properly, is now considered to be disproved. 

Psycholinguistics and language acquisition are not among the classic topics of the GDNÄ. How do you situate your subject in this society focused on natural sciences?
I see myself as a natural scientist. Language and the ability to learn it are central human characteristics – perhaps even characteristics that make us human. In this respect, I research human nature, often using experimental methods from the natural sciences. An example: In infant research, it is always a question of getting babies to react to certain stimuli without being able to explain the task to them. A procedure similar to methods used in behavioural biology is helpful here. Here we record exactly how long the children look at an apple when they hear the word “apple” alternating with the word “banana”. From this, we can conclude what the babies already know or have learned in a certain situation. 

What is the significance of the GDNÄ for you?
The GDNÄ stands for an interdisciplinarity that is extremely important and that our science system lacks in many places. I’m thinking, for example, of an application for collaborative research in the field of physics and chemistry, which I helped to support as vice-president. It took a lot of time until the disciplines involved had found a common language and could work well together. Similar to other classical natural sciences, they had been researching independently of each other for decades. This is where the GDNÄ is of great importance. It can help to get the dialogue between the disciplines going again. 

The University of Potsdam will host the next GDNÄ Assembly in 2024. What can the guests expect?
Guests can expect a young, dynamic and aspiring university that is looking forward to hosting this important and traditional assembly. In addition, we can offer a place that is rich in culture and wonderful nature. I hope the guests will also find some time for this setting of the event.

Professor Hartmann, when somebody googles your name and your field of research, he or she quickly lands on a study on the inner compass of living beings. What exactly did you find out?
The study is about the old question of how salmon always find their spawning grounds accurately or how migratory birds manage to orient themselves over long distances. Many animals have similar abilities, which have long been associated with special receptors for the Earth’s magnetic field. This is where we, an international team of researchers consisting of physicists, geneticists and sensory physiologists, came in with our study. After years of work, we succeeded in making small magnetic particles in individual sensory cells of salmon fish and other creatures visible under the microscope. The clusters of iron oxide particles, which are only a few nanometres in size, could not be visualised with such precision until now. Our study also provides clues to the evolutionary history of the magnetic sense, which primordial bacteria already possessed three billion years ago and which propagated into more highly developed organisms via a set of eleven genes.

The publication had a great media response…
…yes, it was reported worldwide. As our team’s correspondent writer, I was initially caught off guard by the many interview requests, but then adjusted and spoke with a great many journalists. The hype, incredible as it may sound, has continued for almost two years – and the public reacts lively to corresponding media contributions. Readers regularly report on their special orientation ability, their sixth sense, as many call it. This can quickly turn into esotericism, so you have to be careful. But when we think of Eskimos, who often find their way effortlessly in vast snowy deserts, the thought suggests itself that humans also have a sense of magnetic field orientation, perhaps even constructed in a similar way.

Do you want to pursue this hypothesis in your research?
No, I will not pursue it further. The physiologists and representatives of other disciplines will have to get on with it now. I have enough to do with my core topics.

What is your main focus?
My lab is all about developing innovative materials, with a view to interesting new applications. One example is nanowires with a diameter of a thousandth of a hair and extremely low electrical resistance. This is still basic research, but in the foreseeable future such wires could help double the performance of IT devices. We are also working on ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors that could benefit cardiac diagnostics enormously, for example. With the help of artificial intelligence, our sensors can detect magnetic signals from the heart and thus important indications of heart health. We have already presented our concept for a magnetocardiograph of the future at trade fairs and, if an investor can be found, we can bring it into use within three years.  The advantage of the new method is that no electrodes are needed on the skin; instead, our magnetic field sensors work without contact. Certain signals, triggered for example by conduction disorders, can be recorded much more precisely than before.

© Universität des Saarlandes

Not only do you have a broad range of topics, your laboratory is also home to a wide variety of disciplines. How come?
That’s how new ideas are born, and that’s what fascinates me. Unfortunately, our funding landscape in Germany is structured along disciplinary lines. You need a lot of patience to realise interdisciplinary projects. But I take that on myself. I never wanted to be a professional idiot, but a researcher with vision and an interest in society. 

One example of this is your essay on the future of Saarland. What was the response like?
Very lively and it has continued since its publication in 2020. In the essay, my team and I had correctly predicted the closure of the Ford plant in Saarlouis two years before it was announced, which brought us a lot of public attention. Politicians also took the bait. In a discussion with the president of the Saarland state parliament, Stephan Toscani, I was able to explain our methods and forecasts in detail. 

Did you also make science-based recommendations?
That is not what we are about. We analyse the present and model plausible future scenarios on this basis. For Saarland, we have drawn up a particularly positive and a particularly gloomy picture of the future with a view to the year 2050. In the positive scenario, for example, we predict a doubling of the population and a flourishing hydrogen economy. Whether this will happen depends on long-term decisions. Basically, the scenarios are meant to inspire everyone who looks at them to develop their own images of the future. 

You have also written a children’s book. How did that come about?
The impetus came from a lecture at the Saarbrücken Children’s University. I had explained to my audience how various toys, some of them long forgotten, function physically and was delighted by the many questions parents, grandparents and children approached me with. In my book, which was written in a few summer weeks, I delve into these topics. At the centre is the robot Apus, who, with the help of his friends and a lot of artificial intelligence, goes on exciting adventures and solves a lot of mysteries in the process. With the book, I try to introduce children to science and technology in a playful way. The response was very positive and the first edition sold out quickly.  

Children’s initial enthusiasm for scientific topics often wanes over the years. What is the reason for this?
It must have something to do with school lessons. What it is exactly, I don’t know – that’s a matter for the education experts to find out. But from my own experience I can say that the good two thousand young people who visit the Saarland MINT Campus every year are on fire. We have to bring this spark into the schools, because Germany has a huge problem with young people in the STEM subjects of mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology. 

How does this affect your department?
As at most German universities, the number of students and doctoral students in physics is also decreasing here. Many come from abroad, for example from China.

© Universität des Saarlandes

Academic cooperation with China is increasingly viewed with scepticism. You have two Chinese honorary professorships. How do you deal with the new situation?
Of course, I am increasingly concerned about the political developments in China. However, in my experience, there is a clear difference between the behaviour of the political elite and the view of many young people at Chinese universities. Through their stay here with us as doctoral students or young academics, these young people virtually get to experience a contrasting program: free expression of opinion, critical views and lively political discussions. I believe this experience of freedom in the Western world, which has a strong formative effect, justifies potential dangers from the outflow of knowledge or technologies. 

You are retired and continue to do research and teach. Has the shortage of young talent reached the professorial floor?
No, no, that’s not the reason. I simply enjoy doing it very much and take advantage of a model project at my university that allows me to continue working for a few years. My workload includes six hours of lecturing per week, for example on nanotechnology, supervising several research projects and doctoral theses. From my point of view, this could go on for a few more years. 

In the GDNÄ, you are involved as an elected representative and group chair for the 2024 conference in Potsdam. What motivates you?
The GDNÄ stands for an interdisciplinarity that is missing in many places in our scientific landscape. I am also impressed by the student program. The very successful 200th anniversary celebration in Leipzig gave the society a great boost and I like to contribute to maintaining this momentum.

Paul Mühlenhoff, head of the GDNÄ student program, on amazing experiences with ChatGPT, attempts at cheating at school and discussions in the staff room. 

Mr Mühlenhoff, there has been lively discussion about ChatGPT for months. Do you have your own experience with the text generator?
I tried ChatGPT for the first time in late autumn 2022 and found the program surprisingly good, even in the then still early version. I asked practice questions for an upper school lesson on the novel “Der Trafikant” – just for testing purposes, not for a concrete application. The results came very quickly, were quite challenging and seemed to be suitable for the target group. I found it impressive that the program told me what it didn’t know yet. Despite some shortcomings, it was already clear then where the journey was going: these systems will get better and better. 

In the debate about ChatGPT in schools, some call for a ban, others emphasise the new opportunities. What is your position?
In my opinion, a ban would be pointless. ChatGPT and other generative language models are coming and we have to deal with them. Our job as teachers is to explain how it works and to prevent abuse. 

According to a survey by the digital association Bitkom, half of the students in Germany have already used ChatGPT when doing homework, writing texts or preparing for exams. What is it like at your school?
At my school, the Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Bielefeld, ChatGPT is mainly used in the upper school. I don’t know exactly what the situation is like in the middle school. I suspect that it doesn’t play a big role there yet.

© Timo Voss, Studio of Thoughts | Helmholtz-Gymnasium Bielefeld

Bielefeld’s Helmholtz High School, shown here in an aerial photo, was founded in 1896. Under the motto “A modern high school with tradition”, around 100 teachers now teach around 1000 students.

For what purposes do the young people at your school use the chatbot?
As far as I can observe, mainly to try it out and play. However, there have already been individual cases of suspected misuse this year. For example, it was a question of subject papers, i.e. papers that are written at home without school supervision and whose grade is weighted the same as an exam grade. If there are clear discrepancies between the work and the previous performance, we naturally become suspicious.

How did your school react in this situation?
Since we have the burden of proof, colleagues scrutinised the work very closely. Knowing that ChatGPT can also generate source references, they checked, for example, whether Bielefeld libraries had the books mentioned in the paper. The suspicion that papers were written with the help of other people, such as parents, also existed in the past. But ChatGPT opens up completely new dimensions. For this reason, there is already a discussion in our staff about whether papers of the previous type will be acceptable at all in the future. Will they have to be supplemented by oral examinations or will we have to find completely new ways?

It will probably be the same in other schools. How are the school authorities reacting to the challenge?
The Ministry for Schools and Education in North Rhine-Westphalia reacted quickly and published a well-done guide for dealing with text-generating AI systems. Other federal states have also published corresponding recommendations.

What about teacher training on AI in general and chatbots in particular?
There are such offers. But they would only be interesting for me if they were specifically tailored to my subjects of German and biology. That is not yet the case.

You tested ChatGPT early on. Did that have consequences for your teaching?
Yes, I promptly made the new technology a topic in my upper school lessons. We talked about how chatbots work, what they can and cannot do. We also talked about the uncertain source situation and data protection concerns: After all, you have to give out your mobile number to use ChatGPT extensively. However, my main concern in the conversation with the students was to warn them early on about the temptation to use the AI model as a “homework helper”. Using it would be beneficial in the short term, but if you don’t think for yourself, you won’t learn properly. And that is the danger behind it. But then we didn’t continue to use ChatGPT in class.

Can you and your colleagues tell whether a homework assignment was done by students or by a chatbot?
So far I haven’t had any suspicious cases. I would argue that we teachers can tell pretty quickly whether it is our own performance or not. We can assess the performance of our students very well through their participation in class and the exams – discrepancies are quickly noticed. In my subjects, I hardly see any scope for using ChatGPT for homework anyway. They usually involve material with texts and graphics, and you can’t easily feed the AI with that yet. With simple definition tasks, it is perhaps something else. But these are not of great importance for us.

In what way could ChatGPT be useful in your subjects?
That’s a difficult question, because the areas of application are incredibly extensive and many questions are still unanswered for us teachers. I see a possible use especially where the students are in dialogue with the AI and have to formulate their prompts, i.e. their requests, more and more precisely in order to reach the goal. Learning then takes place in this process. In biology, for example, it would be conceivable to first develop experiments hypothetically or even to model an experimental procedure. In German, for example, I would find it exciting to have the AI interpret specific dialogues from a novel or drama excerpt and to discuss the plausibility of the reasons with the students. Can an AI grasp irony? How much context does it need for that? Answering these questions would also be useful for our own understanding of literary texts.

Will ChatGPT fundamentally change schools, as some predict?
No, I don’t think so, at least not in the classical school subjects. It might be different in computer science classes. What certainly remains unaffected by the new technology is our mission as teachers: we are supposed to educate young people to learn independently and impart knowledge. ChatGPT can possibly help with this and enrich the lessons, especially in the upper school.

© MIKA-fotografie | Berlin

Grand finale of the 2022 Student Program on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the GDNÄ in Leipzig. Paul Mühlenhoff is is in the middle of the second row from the top.