Ercenur Unal

I completed my B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Developmental Psychology at Koç University. In 2016, I obtained my Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at University of Delaware under the supervision of Prof. Anna Papafragou. Then, I received post-doctoral training at Radboud University and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Between 2018 and 2024, I was first Assistant then Associate Professor of Psychology at Özyeğin University in Istanbul where I directed the Language Cognition and Development Lab. In September 2024, I joined the Multimodal Language Department.

My research program explores the cognitive constraints and processes that underlie our ability to produce, understand and acquire language. I am particularly interested in how these constraints and processes might be shaped by cross-linguistic diversity and the modality of expression (speech, gesture) throughout development. To investigate these issues, I employ a multimethod approach that includes behavioral experimentation, eye-tracking, linguistic measures and gesture analysis. My work spans diverse linguistic populations and age groups, with the goal of building a more comprehensive understanding of how language interfaces with other aspects of cognition.

My current work at the MLD focuses on the interaction between visual attention and multimodal language processing. In one series of studies, I investigate how children and adults engage visual attention when planning descriptions in speech and/or gesture and how the temporal dynamics of visual attention during planning is modulated by the affordances of the modality of the expressions. In another series of studies, I study how listeners use gesture and speech in combination with the visual information in the extra-linguistic context for predicting upcoming referents.

For more information, please visit my personal website: https://ercenurunal.github.io/