Research Themes

• Identifying characteristics of the cognitive system that determine behaviour in a broad range of linguistic tasks
• Relationships between language production, comprehension, and learning
• Understanding variability in adult language production and comprehension

Approach

• Combination of experimental and correlational work
• Inclusion of diverse samples of participants
• Close links to Language and Genetics and Neurobiology of Language Departments

The work in the department is directed at developing functional models of speaking and listening. We aim to understand which cognitive processes occur when we talk and when we understand spoken utterances, how these processes are coordinated in time, and how they influence each other. One important broad concern of the department is to identify characteristics of the cognitive system that determine behavior across a wide range of linguistic tasks. Working memory capacity, processing speed, or the size of the mental lexicon might be such characteristics. To carry out this work, we often ask speakers and listeners to participate in several speaking, listening, and general cognitive tasks. This allows us to study their performance profiles and to identify underlying traits and skills. This approach also allows us to investigate how performance differences between adult speakers and listeners arise. Whereas experimental psycholinguistic work is most commonly carried out with student participants, we welcome the participation of speakers and listeners with more diverse backgrounds.

Projects

The research in the department occurs in a number of research projects, listed below. The projects differ in scope and duration. Many of them are joint ventures with members of other departments.

• Controlling lexical access
• Coordination of cognitive systems
• Dialogue
• Effects of literacy on cognitive processing
• Learning new words and structures
• Nature and limits of predictive language processing
• Sentence planning and grammatical encoding

Internship