Research Interests
I am interested in how language users store and understand complex words and how they create new ones. Complex words are formed from meaningful units called morphemes. For example, four morphemes comprise the word MIS+MANAG(E) +ABL(E)+ITY and although readers may not have encountered the word +before, they can construct a meaning for it given what they know about MANAGE and the other morphemes that accompany it. To explore how a reader comes to appreciate the morphological structure of words, I often contrast the effect of a shared morpheme with effects due to similarity of form or of meaning in the absence of shared morphology.
Much of my work is conducted abroad with support from NICHD to Haskins Laboratories. It spans native language processing of several languages with very different structures (viz., HEBREW, SERBIAN, CHINESE as well as ENGLISH). I also compare the mastery of past tense inflectional morphology among readers with native and non native proficiency in English (ESL). This work contributes to the current debate in cognitive science concerning the cognitive abilities that underlie linguistic processing and whether they are general or specific to language. Specific areas of interest follow.
- Morphology and the Internal Structure of Words Word Recognition in CHINESE HEBREW, SERBIAN and ENGLISH
- Bilingualism: Morphological Processing in English as a Second Language Comparisons of Language Comprehension by Ear and by Eye Perception of Accented Speech
Education
1980 Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology, University of Connecticut
1978 M.A., Psychology, University of Connecticut
1973 B.A., Psychology and French, Wellesley College
