Current focus and active projects
We are interested in many questions within psycholinguistics. To study these questions, we use a combination of computational modeling and behavioral experiments to get clues that can help us understand these processes. Here are a few example projects that are currently active:
1. Uncovering the cognitive representations of prosodic phenomena – How we say something can convey as much information about what we say. What are the mental representations that allow us to say things in different ways and communicate different meanings through the same words? The goal of this project is to better understand the cognitive representations and processes that allow language-users to use prosody to communicate important information.
2. Cognitive processes of phonological encoding – Phonological encoding is the process of choosing the right sounds and putting them together so that we say the words we intend to say. Although we typically do this quickly, there are times when we may face challenges, resulting in speech errors, disfluencies, or slowdowns in our speech. This project aims to uncover how the process of phonological encoding works by observing how different contexts make something easier or harder to say. We use computational modeling techniques to see what different hypotheses of phonological encoding would predict about how easy or hard it is to say something. Then, we use behavioral data to see what model predictions are supported.
3. Social aspects of meaning – Different people may mean different things when they say the same words. How do we navigate these differences? And how can we incorporate these differences into theories of how meaning is represented in the mind? This set of studies aims to understand these issues in different areas, from finding consensus about fuzzy categories to deciphering coded messages.
4. Integration of prosodic information throughout language comprehension – How do we use information about how something is said to help us understand what was being said? This project is intended to understand how listeners combine information about intonation and emphasis with information about the words and sentence structures to better understand a speaker’s intended meaning.