Mentor Areas
My research is about language and thought, and the relation between the two. My students and I take a cognitive science approach to these topics by asking what sorts of mental computations and representations support human understanding of the world and human linguistic communication. Some of the fundamental questions I am interested in include: How do humans so effortlessly interpret utterances in real-time, using incoming speech to compute a speaker's intended meaning? How do young children learn the meanings of words, and interpret syntactic structure? How do the processing demands of real-time interpretation influence language acquisition, and possibly shape the languages of the world? And conversely, does the language we speak change how we see and think about the world? I have explored these questions using a variety of methods, including behavioral experimentation, eye tracking, and computational modeling. Advances have come from comparing individuals with different language backgrounds (cross-linguistic comparison), different cognitive abilities (individual differences within normal and impaired populations) and different levels of experience/maturation (developmental psycholinguistics).
Description:
Our lab has several projects going on that examine how children and adults learn the meanings of words, and how they learn the linguistic structure of their language. Many of our studies involve the use of eyetrackers, which record where the participant is looking while they hear speech. This gives us a moment-by-moment record of what the person thinks the speech is referring to. We often go to preschools and daycares to collect our data.
Students will assist in the collection of data from participants and in preparing stimuli for experiments. And if skilled in this area, students will help program the eyetracker, in E-Prime, Matlab and/or Python.
Preferred Qualifications
I prefer working with Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors, but I will consider an exceptional Freshman candidate.
Student must have a scientific curiosity, and a love of languages/linguistics is always a plus.
Details:
Preferred Student Year
Second-Year, Junior, Senior
Volunteer
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to volunteers.Paid
No
Yes indicates that faculty are open to paying students they engage in their research, regardless of their work-study eligibility.Work Study
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to hiring work-study-eligible students.