Mentor Areas
Until a few years ago, most of my past research aimed to explain how listeners integrated all information in order to make sense of spoken sentences they heard, in real time. I used eye movements to task-relevant objects to infer what interpretations listeners entertained as sensory information unfolded. More recently, I have focused on unscripted conversations in order to see how conversation partners coordinate with one another in order to communicate successfully. Because each conversation is unique in many ways, the challenge is to find ways to characterize each one in more abstract dimensions in order to describe how people proceed, above and beyond the specific words they use.
Description:
The goal of this research is to characterize and explain how people use language to successfully communicate with one another and to accomplish a common goal, such as completing a matching game. To this end, research in my lab consists of conducting behavioral studies of language use in conversation.
The job involves recruiting research participants in the Penn student population and in the wider community, recording conversations, and coding and analyzing these conversations on a number of dimensions (speech acts, prosody, grammatical devices, etc...).
Preferred Qualifications
A background/coursework in Experimental Psychology or equivalent is required. Some knowledge of linguistics and phonetics, as well as programming skills, are a plus but not mandatory.
Details:
Preferred Student Year
First-year, Second-Year, Junior, Senior
Project Academic Year
2023–2024
Volunteer
Yes
Paid
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to paying students they engage in their research, regardless of their work-study eligibility.Work Study
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to hiring work-study-eligible students.