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Research Findings

In the following summaries, we try to simplify and explain our research findings to make them more accessible to the general public. Wherever possible, we situate our work in the context of some of the big questions about mind and language. For the most up to date and theoretically rigorous work, please also check out our Research Publications.

All of the following summaries have been written by current and past undergraduate Research Assistants with the lab. Over the past year, RAs have worked on a wide array of topics and research projects with Prof Ramscar and our graduate students. Some of these topics include: stereotype threat, semantic priming and prediction, chunk frequency and comprehensibility, pitch categorization, facial distinctiveness, delay of gratification, word learning, literary judgement in Mandarin and English, semantic similarity in relation to distributional context, parsing malapropisms, and probability and number learning in young children. Several of our undergraduate RAs will be submitting to student and professional conferences this year. For more information about our lab team, please visit the Ramscar henchmen page.

Great Debates

-- Innateness versus Empiricism

-- Rethinking Reference

Language Learning

-- Language and Associative Learning

-- No Representation without Taxation

-- Language as a Predictive Process

-- Modeling Language as Prediction

Experimental Application

-- The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

-- Grammatical Gender

-- Fictive Motion

-- Learning Color Words

-- Development of Cognitive Control

-- Response Conflict Resolution