Jeanette Altarriba

The Cognition and Language Laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Jeanette Altarriba, currently examines issues of bilingualism, second language acquisition, and language in applied settings, for Spanish-English bilinguals who represent the Caribbean and countries of Central and South America. The questions relate to how languages are structured in memory, and how they are either kept apart or intermingled as appropriate. Questions on how to best teach a second language to monolingual speakers who are children and adults are also being investigated. Work on language usage in applied settings has involved an examination of bilingual speaking patterns within the counseling or mental health setting. Given that multiple language users have an array of expressions from which to choose in more than one language, this knowledge can be used strategically or automatically to indirectly express symptomatology or psychological states. This work on languages has been coupled with an in depth look at Cubans both from a traditional perspective and from the perspective of Cuban-American values and traditions in current times. Descriptions of Cuban-American mental health, views of well being and psychological assessment, and general worldviews have been explored and described in various writings.
An additional area of research interest that Dr. Altarriba is pursuing involves the study of emotion.  Questions related to how emotions are represented in more than one language, how they are organized within and across languages, and how emotional information is tied to a specific language are all areas that are currently under study within her laboratory.

•    Altarriba, J., & Mathis, K.M. (1997). Conceptual and lexical development in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 550-568.
•    Altarriba, J., & Bauer, L.M. (1998). Counseling Cuban Americans. In D.R. Atkinson, G. Morten, & D.W. Sue, (Eds.), Counseling American minorities: A cross-cultural perspective (5th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
•    Altarriba, J. & Bauer, L. M (1998). Counseling the Hispanic Client: Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans. Journal of Counseling & Development, 76, 389-395.
•    Altarriba, J., & Bauer, L.M. (2204). The distinctiveness of emotion concepts:  A comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words.  American Journal of Psychology, 117, 389-410.
•    Altarriba, J., & Canary, T.M. (2004).  Affective priming: The automatic activation of arousal.  Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25, 248-265.