More information about some of our research can be accessed via links (blue text).
Psychological and Neural Mechanisms of Language Comprehension
Our research aims to elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms that are involved in the real-time comprehension of words, sentences, and discourse, and on how these different levels of language information interact in real-time during comprehension of spoken and written language input.
- Prediction During Comprehension
- Syntactic Priming
- Referential Processing
- Individual Differences in Language Processing
- We examine individual differences in listening comprehension during processing of sentence and discourse contexts as a function of working memory capacity, cognitive control and language experience. Previous research has shown that language experience instead of working memory capacity is the best predictor of text comprehension during reading. Thus far, our research suggests that working memory capacity may play an important role during spoken language comprehension.
- Bilingualism
- We examine language comprehension in (bi-modal) bilinguals. In our studies we examine if language context can selectively direct and predict comprehension to the input language. We are also interested to assess whether individual language proficiency and cognitive control abilities modulate language selection as a function of language context.
- Language Comprehension in older adults
- Language Deficits and Cognitive Impairments in Schizophrenia
- Schizophrenia is a prevalent mental health disorder that creates enormous social, economic, and interpersonal hardships for patients and their families. Although hallucinations and delusions are the most salient symptoms of this disease, language abnormalities are among the most prominent cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.