CRAIG CHAMBERS, PhD.
When people speak, they strike a balance between information conveyed with language and information conveyed in other ways, e.g., through gestures, intonation, and the environment where conversation is taking place. Listeners, in turn, must draw on all these information sources to understand what the speaker means. The goal of research in my laboratory is to understand the mental components that underlie this comprehension process. Recently, we have been investigating how the real-time understanding of spoken language is influenced by aspects of action planning. This research uses a technique in which eye movements are recorded as listeners follow instructions to manipulate objects in a visual workspace.
Current Graduate Students
Tiana Simovic (PhD, Psychology, in progress)
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linguistic meaning and reference
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ambiguity in language
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real-time comprehension
Sonny Wang (PhD, Psychology, in progress)
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visual perspective taking
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linguistic perspective taking
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individual differences in interpersonal communication
Outside Project Student
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Madeleine Yu (PhD, Psychology, in progress)
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L2 and child speech processing
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voice recognition
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dual-task processing with accented speech
Visiting Faculty
Yingjia Wan (PhD, Psychology; Assistant Professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
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Real-time communication
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Linguistic perspective-taking
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Joint action/interpersonal coordination
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Social cognitive development
Research Assistants
Faris Khan
Whitney Mambou
FORMER PALS
Graduate Students
Raheleh Saryazdi (MA, PhD, Psychology)
Thesis: Aging and referential communication: Insights from interactions with artificial agents.
Currently: Assistant Professor, Trent University
Mercedeh Mohaghegh (PhD, Linguistics)
Thesis: Connected speech processes and lexical access in real-time comprehension.
Currently: Speech Scientist, Nuance Communications
Mindaugas Mozuraitis (MA, PhD, Psychology)
Thesis: Managing privileged knowledge about identity in language comprehension.
Currently: Manager, Reporting & Analytics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
Cara Tsang (MA, PhD, Psychology)
Thesis: Exploring impulsive activation during spoken language comprehension.
Currently: Senior Designer-Researcher, MyPlanet Digital
Jodi Edwards (MA, Linguistics)
Thesis:The role of syntactic form in incremental referential interpretation
Currently: Director, Brain & Heart Nexus Research Program, University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Justine Thacker (PhD, Psychology)
Thesis: Children’s attention to emotional prosody: Selectivity in response to speaker conventionality
Currently: Clinical Psychologist, Calgary, AB
Jared Berman (PhD, Psychology)
Thesis: Preschoolers' use of vocal affect as a cue to referential intent
Currently: Child and Parent Resource Institute (CPRI), Western University
Postdoctoral Researchers
Currently: Knowledge Mobilization Specialist at Research Impact Canada
Currently: Data Scientist at 123FormBuilder
Currently: Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Toronto
BSc Thesis Students
Sonny Wang (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: Does language based communicative perspective taking draw on domain general cognitive abilities?
Chris Klammer (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: My, what deceptive features you have! Referential object identity in real-time spoken language
processing
Agatha Rodrigues (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: Effects of overspecification and noise on downstream processing: Evidence from eye-movements
Robert Redford (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: The good, the bad, and the ugly: Incremental interpretation of evaluative adjectives.
Joshua Romano (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: Multimodal processing of speech: The relationship between beat gesture synchrony and speech
comprehension
Daniel De Santis (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: Speech disfluencies and the elderly: Effects on online interpretation
Hilary Cooke (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: Using eye movements to measure parallel lexical activation in English-French bilinguals
Valerie San Juan (BSc, Psychology)
Thesis: The point of knowing 'return': Presuppositions about prior actions constrain real-time reference
resolution
Recent Research Assistants and Independent Study Students
Shujie Xie
Keyu Huang
Kelly Qi
Caren Khalaf
Joanne Nuque
Jan Dizon
Simran Kanda
Jarrod Servilla
Samiha Ahmed
Alexandra Kljuseva
Tamara Mostarac
Tamim Fattah
Manraj Thind
Izzar Linares
Yvette Hou
Lena Donald
Sara MacDonald
Julie Bannon
Piumi Rajaskera
Ronda Lo
Aashita Pattni