People
Academic Staff
My research interests include the relationship between language and attention. For example, a recent project funded by the ESRC used the Psychological Refractory Period (or PRP) paradigm to investigate the locus of frequency-sensitive processing in word recognition. A second strand of research examines the processes that underlie language production, specifically which factors influence a speaker's choice of word order. For example, the syntactic priming effect (also known as structural priming or structural persistence) tells us that speakers reuse previously processed sentence structures. By manipulating sentence structure and content in an experimental setting, we can use this effect to examine production processes.
Graham Scott
Graham Scott gained an undergraduate degree, masters degree and PhD from Glasgow University before coming to Aberdeen as a teaching assistant in 1998. He is interested in emotional language and has investigated this using a number of techniques including EEG, priming, self-paced reading and eye-tracking methodologies, focussing specifically on interactions with word frequency. At the moment he is interested in how emotion words can influence attitudes, particularly in the area of consumer psychology.
PhD Students
Bernadet Jager
Bernadet's PhD project currently focuses on ambiguity effects in word recognition, particularly the distinction between words that have many unrelated meanings (e.g., "bank") and words that have many related senses (e.g., "hook"). So far, she has been investigating this topic with the help of an online questionnaire and the lexical decision paradigm. Other fields of interest include frequency effects, processing of figurative language, and language evolution. Bernadet's PhD supervisors are Sandie Cleland and David Carey.
Emily's PhD project focuses on the extent to which current models of language production can be applied to sign language production. Emily's PhD supervisors are Rebecca Bull and Sandie Cleland.
Tom Mitchell
Tom is a teaching assistant and part-time PhD student, and joined the department in September 2009. His PhD research focuses on the development of automaticity of number and language processing across the lifespan. He is supervised by Rebecca Bull and Sandie Cleland.
Collaborators & Links
Anna Hatzidaki
Aberdeen Natural Language Generation Group
Centre for Linguistic Research at Aberdeen
Psycholinguistics Research Group at York
Language research at Edinburgh University Psychology Department
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Language research at Dundee University Psychology Department
Publications
Melinger, A., & Cleland, A.A. (in press). The influence of sentential position on noun phrase structure priming. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Cleland, A.A., Tamminen, J.T., Quinlan, P.T., & Gaskell, M.G. (in press). Spoken word processing creates a lexical bottleneck. Language and Cognitive Processes.
Gaskell, M.G., Quinlan, P.T., Tamminen, J.T., & Cleland, A.A. (2008). The nature of phoneme representation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 282-302.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., McLean, J.F., & Cleland, A.A. (2007). Syntactic alignment and participant role in dialogue. Cognition, 104, 163-197.
Cleland, A.A., & Pickering, M.J. (2006). Do writing and speaking employ the same syntactic representations? Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 185-198.
Tamminen, J,. Cleland, A., Quinlan, P., & Gaskell, G. (2006). Processing semantic ambiguity: Different loci for meaning and senses. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (p.2222-2227). Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cleland, A.A., Gaskell, M.G., Quinlan, P.T., & Tamminen, J. (2006). Frequency effects in spoken and visual word recognition: Evidence from dual-task methodologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 104-119.
Cleland, A.A., & Pickering, M.J. (2003). The use of lexical and syntactic information in language production: Evidence from the priming of noun-phrase structure. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 214-230.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & Cleland, A.A. (2000). Syntactic coordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.
Pickering, M.J., Branigan, H.P., Cleland, A.A., & Stewart, A.J. (2000). Activation of syntactic information during language production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 205-216.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & Cleland, A.A. (1999). Syntactic priming in written production: Evidence for rapid decay. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 635-640.
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