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Research

Below more information about some of our recent work can be accessed via links (blue text).

Psychological and Neural Mechanisms of Language Comprehension

This 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.

Individual Differences in Language Processing

We have examined 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.

  • Sentence Processing
    • Thematic Integration
    • Effects of Lexical Associations
  • Discourse Processing
    • Global vs Local Context

Bilingualism

Recently, we have begun to examine language comprehension in Spanish-English bilinguals. In our studies we examine if language context (Spanish or English) can selectively direct 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 Cognitively Healthy Aging

In this line of research we focus on prediction processes during reading comprehension in older readers, and contrast two leading hypotheses in the field; the risky reading hypothesis and the prediction deficit hypothesis. The risky reading hypothesis proposes that elderly readers can compensate to a certain degree for their perceptual and cognitive decline by using their vast experience with and knowledge of language. This hypothesis suggests that older readers increasingly rely on expectations and probabilities to actively generate predictions for upcoming information during reading comprehension. The prediction deficit hypothesis suggests that cognitive decline prevents them from actively generating predictions during reading comprehension. Our initial results suggest that older readers make lexical predictions during discourse comprehension

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.