Category: Uncategorized

Poort, E.D., Rodd, J.M. (2019). Towards a distributed connectionist account of cognates and interlingual homographs: evidence from semantic relatedness tasks. PeerJ. 7:e6725 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6725

In this paper Eva reports two pre-registered online experiments looking at how bilingual participants respond to word forms that exist in both their languages: cognates and interlingual homographs. The results show a striking similiarity to the pattern of results seen in monolingual participants for words that are ambiguous within their single language. She proposes a theoretical approach to unifying these two areas of research.

Blott, L.M., Rodd, J.M., Ferreira, F., Warren J. (2019). Semantic ambiguity resolution during sentence comprehension is more efficient in individuals with greater lexical expertise. https://psyarxiv.com/3ejqy/

This pre-print reports an eye-tracking study (N=96) That Lena conducted while visiting Fernanda Ferreira’s lab in UCSD.

The results highlight the importance of reading experience and vocabulary knowledge for the efficiency of on-line reading processes in adult readers.

Jenni will present a talk entitled “How do we access the meanings of words?”

See here for the schedule of talks.

Jenni Rodd has written an article for the APS Observer Magazine. She emphasizes the importance of prepregistering exclusion cirterial when testing online:

“… you will inevitably collect some data that will be unusable — you simply cannot ensure that all participants will behave as instructed. It is therefore necessary to devise a set of experiment-specific criteria for excluding participants’ datasets from your analyses.”

Congratulations to Dr Hannah Betts who passed her viva with very minor corrections on Monday 14th May 2018. Her thesis is on ‘Retuning lexical-semantic representations on the basis of recent experience’. Thanks to Dr Jane Warren and Dr Matt Davis who were Hannah’s examiners.

Interested in joining The Word Lab? Dr Jenni Rodd is looking to recruit a PhD student to work on a project on ‘Using natural language environments to study vocabulary
development across the lifespan’, starting October 2018.

Further information about the project is available here: Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme for the Ecological Study of the Brain

Further information about the studentship is available here: http://ecologicalbrain.org/prospective-students/

Please note that the deadline to apply for the studentship is: 28th March 2018

Interested applicants should contact Dr Jenni Rodd in the first instance: j.rodd(at)ucl.ac.uk

Interested in joining The Word Lab? Dr Jenni Rodd is looking to recruit PhD students to work on language comprehension/learning for October 2018 entry.

Funding is available through competitive ESRC Studentships, application for which is now open:

https://ubel-dtp.ac.uk/eligibility/

The deadline for preliminary applications for funding through this scheme is TUESDAY 9 JANUARY 2018 at 4.00pm (GMT).

Potential applicants are encouraged to get in touch: j.rodd(at)ucl.ac.uk

Eva Poort’s preregistered article entitled ‘The cognate facilitation effect in bilingual lexical decision is influenced by task demands’ has been approved by the Centre for Open Science for entry into the Preregistration Challenge (Experiment 2 of the paper was preregistered through the Open Science Framework). Eva is eligible to win a $1000 award in the next awards round on January 1, 2018.

Eva was recently interviewed about her first experience of preregistration, you can read the interview in full here: The “Preregistration Challenge” – Interview with Eva Poort

Eva Poort has been awarded a Study Visit Grant from the Experimental Psychology Society and will shortly be leaving on a 3-month study visit to Ghent University to work alongside Professor Marc Brysbaert. Congratulations, Eva!

The Word Lab’s very own Dr Jenni Rodd was featured in a blog series by the Department of Experimental Psychology at UCL celebrating the achievements of female researchers in honour of International Women’s Day on 8th March.

Read the blog here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/experimental-psychology/blog/women-experimental-psychology-jenni-rodd/