LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

The ability to comprehend, produce and acquire language is a unique component of human cognition. Understanding the underpinnings of this fundamental ability requires researchers to cross disciplinary boundaries and consider language from computational, psychological, neurological, linguistic and pathological perspectives. The language community at Iowa actively embraces this approach and is looking for students who wish to do the same.







LANGUAGE RESEARCH AT IOWA

The University of Iowa offers an environment that is on the cutting edge of language research. Our research employs state of the art techniques such as eye-tracking, computational modeling, methodologies for working with infant, child, and adult populations, as well as access to populations with specific language impairment and cochlear implantation. Moreover, this research is conducted in the context of a cross-disciplinary group of language researchers who build on the broader strengths of the departments of Psychology and Speech Pathology.






GRADUATE STUDY AT IOWA

The PhD is offered through the Department of Psychology. Graduate students apply and enroll in specific areas within Psychology. Both the Cognition & Perception and the Developmental Areas support language resaerch at Iowa. Students should apply to either one, depending on their interests. The Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology also offers a PhD, which may be more appropriate for applicants who are interested in language disorders. Regardless of the training area, training at Iowa encompasses both research and theory, and students will be trained in a broad range of psycholinguistic methods and theories, as well as their application to broader thinking in psychology and cognitive science.

 






THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

The University of Iowa is located in Iowa City, in east central Iowa. Iowa City offers a vibrant cultural life set in a small college town amongst the rolling hills of Iowa. Chicago and St. Louis are both about four hours away.







FOR MORE INFORMATION

To obtain more information about opportunities for graduate study or to apply to the program, please email
language-research@uiowa.edu.
WHO WE ARE

The core language group in Psychology comprises:

  • Prahlad Gupta: My lab's central research interest is in understanding the learning and use of human language. Our current program of research focusses on the learning of new words. Our goal is to construct a theory of word learning that will be precisely specified at the functional and computational levels, specified to the extent possible at the neural level, and that can usefully be applied to investigating language disorders in a variety of populations. Accordingly, the methodology adopted in our research includes psychological experimentation, computational modeling and analysis, and neuropsychological investigation.

    Personal Home Page
    Lab Web Page
    Email: prahlad-gupta@uiowa.edu

  • Bob McMurray: My research examines the processes of online spoken word recognition and speech perception in both infants and adults. This work is tied together by the question of how within-category acoustic detail is useful in word recognition. Given the high speed at which language enters the brain, this information may help integrate material over time by anticipating future linguistic events and resolving prior ambiguous material. Moreover, such sensitivity may play a critical role in infants abilities to learn the categories of their native language. My examinations of these fundamental questiosn has led our lab to experiments using advanced eye-tracking techniques in both infants, adults and impaired listeners, coupled with more traditional tasks and also computational modeling.

    Personal Home Page
    Lab Web Page
    Email: bob-mcmurray@uiowa.edu

  • Larissa Samuelson: Language acquisition; category formation; connectionist models of language acquisition.

    Personal Home Page
    Lab Web Page
    Email: larissa-samuelson@uiowa.edu

Additionally, we have strong ties and collaborations with faculty in Speech Pathology including:
  • Bruce Tomblin: My research has focused on understanding the causes and consequences of individual differences in language development. This research begins with a perspective that language impairment exists when undesirable outcomes for individuals are attributable to listening and speaking abilities. Those factors that are a part of the causal path to poor outcomes inherit a negative value via their effects on outcome. This perspective has led to two primary research programs. One has involved following children with a wide range of oral language skills from kindergarten into young adulthood. This research has documented the language, academic, and social status of these children during this time. In conjunction with this, we have pursued studies on the cognitive and genetic characteristics of these children that are associated with their language growth status. The research designs in this program span epidemiologic sampling methods, longitudinal designs for growth analyses, cross-sectional case-control designed experiments, and molecular genetic studies.

    Lab Web Page
    Email: j-tomblin@uiowa.edu

  • Karla McGregor: I am interested in children's word learning, particularly how children develop rich meanings for the words in their lexicons. To investigate this question, I take an "individual differences" approach comparing for example, early and late talkers, children with specific language impairment and autism, children from advantaged or disadvantaged economic environments, or children who are learning one language vs. two.

    Email: k-mcgregor@northwestern.edu

  • Amanda Owen: My primary area is related to the use of complex sentences in preschool and early school-age children diagnosed with specific language impairment. I am interested in continuing to explore the use of syntax in both typically developing children and children with language impairment, focusing on the use of conjunctions and tense markers across clauses. I am also interested in aspects of the morpho-phonological interface, the interaction between the syntax and the lexicon and issues related to the identification of children with specific language impairment in the school-age years.

    Email: ajowen@purdue.edu

  • Jean Gordon: My research focuses on models of lexical access and lexical access deficits in aphasia, using a combination of behavioural experiments and connectionist modelling. I am interested in exploring the factors which make words particularly susceptible or resistant to disruption, both in normal speech and in aphasia, and how these factors interact in spontaneous connected speech.

    Personal Home Page
    Email: jean-k-gordon@uiowa.edu