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Personal Information Mathias Scharinger

Official Name & Address

Prof. Dr. Mathias Scharinger

Philipps-Universität Marburg
Institut für Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft
Arbeitsgruppe Phonetik
Pilgrimstein 16
35032 Marburg

Link to UMR-directory
Mathias Scharinger

 Positions

2017— Professor (W2) for Phonetics, Philipps-University of Marburg
2015–2017 Research group leader (W2), Max-Planck-Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt
2014–2015 Own position (DFG), University of Leipzig
2011–2013 Postdoctoral fellow, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
2009–2010 Postdoctoral fellow, University of Maryland, USA

Academic Qualifications

  • 2016                Habilitation, University of Potsdam, Germany
  • 2007                Dissertation (Ph.D.), University of Konstanz, Germany

Summary of research interests

My main research interests concern human speech recognition and language comprehension. This includes the categorization of human speech sounds, the combinatorics of word formation, and the interaction of phonetic, phonological and morphological processing levels. Besides questions of how regularities may allow for beneficial predictions during processing, I am interested in representational theories regarding complex morphological structures. The research in representations is based on experimental work in psycho- and neurolinguistics traditions and also involves aspects of dialect competence. A recent research interest relates to the aesthetic evaluation of language in comparison to music.

 Academic activities

  • Guest editor for Cortex (2015) and Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience (2018, 2020)
  • Ad-hoc reviewer for: Applied Psycholinguistics, Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, Behavioral Brain Research, Biological Psychology, Brain and Language, Brain Imaging & Behavior, Brain Research, Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, Cortex, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, eNeuro, European Journal of Neuroscience, Frontiers Psychology, Human Brain Mapping, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Journal of Germanic Linguistics, Journal of Laboratory Phonology, Journal of Neurolinguistics, Journal of Phonetics, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), Language, Language and Cognitive Processes, Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, NeuroImage, Neuropsychologia, Phonology, PlosOne, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), Psychological Science, Scientific Reports, Speech Communication, The Journal of Neuroscience, The Mental Lexicon
  • Vize-head of the Department of German Linguistics, Philipps-University Marburg
  • Spokesperson of a planned Research Training Group (under review) on Language Representations
  • Chair of MA: Speech Science & Phonetics (together with Prof. Kati Hannken-Illjes
  • Chair of MScs: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience; Cognitive and Integrative Systems Neuroscience (together with Prof. Carsten Culmsee)
  • Member of the IT-Commission, Philipps-University Marburg

 Research support during the last 5 years

2020 3-T MRT Scanner (Co-Applicant), German Research Council (DFG)
2019 Interdisciplinary Research Project, Research Support Foundations, UMR
2018 International Workshop, Thyssen Stiftung
2014–2017 Own position and Ph.D. support, German Research Council (DFG)

 Ph.D. supervisions of the last 5 years

Blohm, Stefan Literary Psycholinguistics and the Poem
Franchini, Sarah Neurodialektale Verarbeitung
Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia Prosodic phrase boundary perception in adults and infants
Riedinger, Miriam Neuronale Grundlagen der Vokalverarbeitung im Deutschen
Strauss, Antje Cognitive–linguistic expectancies in degraded speech

 List of 10 selected publications

  1. Auracher, J., Menninghaus, W., & Scharinger, M. (2020). Sound Predicts Meaning: Cross-Modal Associations Between Formant Frequency and Emotional Tone in Stanzas. Cognitive Science, 44(10), e12906.
  2. Auracher, J., Scharinger, M., & Menninghaus, W. (2019). Contiguity-based sound iconicity: The Meaning of words resonates with phonetic properties of their immediate verbal contexts PLoS ONE, 14(5), e0216930.
  3. Blohm, S., Schlesewsky, M., Menninghaus, W., & Scharinger, M. (2021). Text type attribution modulates pre-stimulus alpha power in sentence reading. Brain and Language, 214(104894), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104894.
  4. Frank, M., Muhlack, B., Zebe, F., & Scharinger, M. (2020). Contributions of pitch and spectral information to cortical vowel categorization. Journal of Phonetics, 79, 1-13.
  5. Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Knoop, C. A., & Scharinger, M. (2018). Poetic speech melody: A crucial link between music and language. PLoS One, 13(11), e0205980.
  6. Scharinger, M. (2018). Neural bases of phonological representations: Empirical approaches and methods. In C. Ulbrich, A. Werth & R. Wiese (Eds.), Empirical Approaches to the Phonological Structure of Words (pp. 241-273). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  7. Scharinger, M. (2020). Abstractions, predictions, and speech sound representations. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e146.
  8. Scharinger, M., Steinberg, J., & Tavano, A. (2018). Integrating speech in time depends on temporal expectancies and attention. Cortex, 93, 28-40.
  9. Schuster, S., Scharinger, M., Brooks, C., Lahiri, A., & Hartwigsen, G. (2018). The neural correlates of morphological complexity processing: Detecting structure in pseudowords. Human Brain Mapping, https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.23975, 1-12.
  10. Zimmerer, F., Scharinger, M., Cornell, S. A., Reetz, H., & Eulitz, C. (2019). Neural mechanisms for coping with acoustically reduced speech. Brain and Language, 191, 46-57.