Sentence Processing Laboratory

Overview

The Sentence Processing Laboratory in Northeastern University's Psychology Department investigates how people produce and comprehend language, focusing on mental representations and processes related to dealing with sentences. Thus, in language production, we examine how people choose a particular sequence of words to express some particular meaning that they wish to convey. In language comprehension, we examine how people combine the meanings of a sequence of words (like the ones in this sentence) to construct the meaning of an entire sentence.

Current topics and issues under investigation include: ambiguity resolution, interactions between memory and language processes, individual differences in language ability, cross-linguistic differences in language processing, functional neuroimaging of language processes, and interactions between detailed knowledge of word meaning and word use in sentences. See our current lab projects for more details.

The laboratory includes facilities for recording spoken language and for recording eye-movements during reading, as well as a variety of Macintosh and PC computers for preparing and running experiments and collecting and analyzing reaction time and other performance data.

Primary support for the lab is provided by National Institutes of Health grant DC05237 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Principal Investigator:

Prof. Neal J. Pearlmutter
Psychology Dept., 125 NI
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115

pearlmutter@neu.edu
(617) 373-3040 (office)
(617) 373-3213 (lab)
(617) 373-8714 (fax)

Last Modified: 08/23/06