Main Content

The role of timing on the acquisition and use of mental representations (PhD project - Johanna Funk)

During everyday communication, humans use language in different modalities. Next to spoken and signed language processing, we convey meaning through written text and bodily signals, such as gestures, beats and facial expressions. The mental storage of linguistic information is inter alia based on associative links between representations of these multiple modalities and their coordinated activation is important for proficient language use.

In her PhD project, Johanna Funk examines the role of timing in acquiring and using different types of mental representations stored in the brain. Specifically, in one strand, she studies the effects of different timing conditions (i.e., synchronous and asynchronous presentation) when encoding and linking novel written and spoken word forms. The first study in that strand is currently in preparation. In a different line of work, she plans to extend her focus to the role of timing in gestures-speech integration.

For answering her research questions, Johanna will use neuro- and psycholinguistic methods, including behavioral paradigms, EEG, and Eye-Tracking. Her results will contribute to refining models on the representation of linguistic knowledge and on multimodal language processing. Next to these theoretical insights, her results may have implications for methods of novel word learning in typical populations and in clinical settings for a training of e.g., amnesic aphasia or dyslexia.

Sub-projects

• The role of presentational timing in acquiring novel written and spoken word forms
  (with Falk Huettig & Florian Hintz)