Iza Škrjanec

I have been a doctoral researcher in Prof. Vera Demberg's group since December 2022 and am affiliated with the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELIZA). 

My research lies at the intersection of NLP and computational psycholinguistics. I explore how language models can both implement and inform theories of human language processing. I examine correlations between model behavior (e.g., word probabilities) and human data such as eye movements during reading, including data from readers with varying background knowledge and from bilinguals. 

I also collaborate within the MultiplEYE COST Action https://multipleye.eu/ 

Selected publications:

- Language models that match reader experience are better predictors of reading times. 
Iza Škrjanec and Vera Demberg.
In Journal of Memory and Language. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2025.104677

- Is Cross-Lingual Transfer in Bilingual Models Human-Like? A Study with Overlapping Word Forms in Dutch and English. 
Iza Škrjanec, Irene Elisabeth Winther, Vera Demberg, and Stefan L. Frank. 
To appear in the Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL 2026). https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07067