Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences


Focus Groups


Language, Mind, and Brain Focus Group

Overview:

The language, mind and brain focus group brings together people who are involved in the inter-disciplinary empirical study of the interface between language, communication, cognition and neurology, including the traditional inter-disciplinary areas of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.

Primary Contact Person:
Tom Givón, Linguistics Department, 346-3923 (http://logos.uoregon.edu/uoling/faculty/givon/BOOKS.htm)

Institute members currently belonging to this focus group are:

Mark Johnson , Philosophy

Eric Pederson, Linguistics

Susan Guion, Linguistics

Russ Tomlin, Linguistics

T. Givón, Linguistics

Don Tucker , Psychology

Bertram Malle , Psychology

Dare Baldwin , Psychology

Mike Posner , Psychology

Each focus group member is entitled to propose graduate students working with them on relevant projects for graduate associate membership. Current graduate associates are:

Mitzi Barker, Linguistics

T. Jennifer Weston, Linguistics

Meetings and Events:

Research Projects

1. "Teaching Grammar to Apes"

Funded by NIMH, 2000-2003/2005. In collaboration with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist at Georgia State University's Language Research Center.

A cross-disciplinary project trying to see whether any elements of grammar, pre-grammar or proto-grammar can be taught to Bonobos. A functional-communicative approach, trying to teach grammar-coded communicative functions rather than mere syntactic structures. Methodology involves beginning with pre-grammatical structures (verbs that take verbal complements; demonstratives and numeral modifiers of head nouns) that are known to be pre-cursors to particular grammatical sub-systems (tense-aspect-modality, determiners, respectively). Creating communicative tasks that are the natural contexts for particular grammatical developments. One Research Assistant (grad student) position still open; requires background in linguistics & willingness to work in Atlanta, Ga.; will presumably lead to a Ph.D. dissertation.

2. "The Neurology of Grammar"

Packard Foundation, funding pending, 2000-2003. A cross disciplinary collaboration with Don Tucker (neuropsychology, UO) and Allen Maloney (computer science, UO).

Investigating the neurological correlartes of various grammatical sub-components (morphology, hierarchic syntactic structure) and their interaction with the lexicon, propositional semantics and discourse pragmatics. Using the imaging techniques of ERP (for fine temporal resolution) and FMRI (for fine spatial resolution) during on-line performance of specifically-designed communicative tasks. Two graduate RAs (already committed).

3. "Gender Priming and the Bilingual Mind"

Funding pending.

An investigation adapting the technique of Semantic Priming to investigate the cognitive correlares of grammatical gender of nouns and the organization of the mental lexicon. Comparing the processing of Spanish and English nouns by Spanish-to-English and English-to-Spanish bilinguals. In collaboration with Mitzi Barker and Jennifer Weston (grad students).

4. "The Temporal Limits on Event Perception"

Funding pending.

An investigation into the temporal limits on event processing, with both pictorial and verbal presentation and episodic memory measurements. With the intention of expanding the study to both pre-linguistic children and apes, and eventually interpreting the results within an evolutionary perspective. In collaboration with Mitzi Barker and Jennifer Weston (grad students).


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