Research
Studies in our lab investigate the neural bases of language processing at multiple levels of linguistic representation, ranging from basic operations of morpheme access to syntactic composition and sentence level semantic processing. Our primary technique is magnetoencephalography (MEG), which offers the best combination of temporal and spatial resolution of currently available brain monitoring techniques. See the abstracts below for examples of ongoing projects in our lab.
Our research is currently funded by NSF Award BCS-0545186.
Posters at the 21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, 2008:
Hugh Rabagliati, Suzanne Dikker & Liina Pylkkänen:
Sensitivity to syntax in visual cortex: A manipulation of prediction strength and morphological type.
Jonathan Brennan & Liina Pylkkänen:
Semantic Composition and Inchoative Coercion: An MEG Study.
Presentations & Posters at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society:
Hugh Rabagliati, Suzanne Dikker & Liina Pylkkänen:
Sensitivity to syntax in visual cortex: an MEG study.
Jonathan Brennan, Yuval Nir, Uri Hasson, Rafael Malach, David Heeger, and Liina Pylkkänen:
Language in Wonderland: Linguistic processing during natural story listening
Presentations & Posters at the The 20th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, 2007:
Hugh Rabagliati, Suzanne Dikker & Liina Pylkkänen:
MEG reveals sensitivity to phrase-structure violations in visual cortex.
Jonathan Brennan & Liina Pylkkänen:
Processing Events: Aspectual Coercion in Self-Paced Reading and Magnetoencephalography
Suzanne Dikker:
Fine-graining structure prediction in sentence processing: Evidence from language mixing.
Presentations by lab members at the The 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, 2006:
Suzanne Dikker:
Disentangling incremental and top-down parsing: experimental evidence from VO/OV word order patterns in code-switching
Jesse Harris, Liina Pylkkänen, Brian McElree & Steven Frisson:
Interpretation of concealed questions: MEG and eye-tracking data
Eytan Zweig & Liina Pylkkänen:
Early effects of morphological complexity in visual word processing: an MEG study.
Posters from the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society:
Zweig E & Pylkkänen L: The Timecourse of Morphological Processing: An MEG Study.