Psycholinguistics Lab
Language
Research focus involves behavioral studies with unimpaired populations and centers on the various processes engaged during on-going sentence comprehension. The CNL's work thus far has explored
- the nature of context effects (semantic, plausibility, etc.) on lexical access;
- the level of analyses involved in co-referential processing; and
- lexical ambiguity resolution. These studies focus on the processing capacities of unimpaired college and aging populations as well as the developmental capacities of pre-school age children in all of these stages of language processing.
In a separate but related vein, the CNL is studying methodological issues involving the relative sensitivities of various on-line experimental techniques in language processing with a particular focus on what various methods can and cannot tell experimenters about the processes in which they are investigating.
Cognition
The CNL is actively studying the role of various aspects of cognition (e.g. spatial neglect, hemi-inattention, memory) and their interaction with language function. It is critical to understand how neural trauma can affect these cognitive processes and the resulting effects on language (if any) detailing the
- neural underpinnings of cognitive neglect syndromes;
- effects of working memory impairments on cognitive function and
- visuo-spatial deficits in hearing and deaf populations.
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