Amy DiBattista
Graduate Student
Department of Psychology, 125-NI
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 373-3077 (office)
(617) 373-8714 (fax)
dibattista.a@husky.neu.edu

Advisor: Neal Pearlmutter

Research

I am a second year graduate student working with Professor Neal Pearlmutter in the Sentence Processing Lab. My research focuses on language production, specifically speech errors and the use of syntax in phrase and sentence construction. 

I am currently working on a project designed to investigate exchange errors in phrase-level language production—the errors that result when we accidentally switch one word for another, such as saying “the letter on the stamp” when “the stamp on the letter” was meant. This project is also an investigation of the role of semantic integration—a relatedness relationship between lexical items—in errors, in grammatical encoding, and in the sentence production system as a whole. A broader question that I plan to explore is the role of semantic integration in word order choice, for example in the choice between active and passive sentences or between prepositional dative and double-object constructions.

In the future, I hope to incorporate my background in speech-language pathology by extending my research to include ordering errors in people with aphasia.