Research Projects

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1.  Universal and script-specific mechanisms of reading

Reading is a complex cognitive task that involves the dynamic coordination of perceptual and cognitive processes, as our eyes make a series of movements and briefly remain fixated to extract information from the text. Extensive research in alphabetic writing systems (e.g., English) has revealed how and when the language system decodes phonological, morphological, and semantic information from the orthographic symbols. However, these conclusions may not extend to other writing systems that differ in appearance and in how visual symbols are mapped to sounds and meanings. The Thai script, for example, is an alphasyllabary writing system that does not typically have interword spaces. Which perceptual and cognitive mechanisms of skilled reading are universal across all writing systems, and which aspects are script-specific?

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🌱Ongoing project: Perceptual and cognitive mechanisms of reading Thai (collaboration with Dr. Tommi Leung)

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2.  Storage and processing of multi-word units and formulaic language

One of the distinctive features of human language is the ability to express our thoughts through an infinite number of linguistic expressions. The traditional explanation for this linguistic productivity is that we store single words alongside the grammatical rules for combining them. However, recent evidence has shown that language prevalently contains recurring patterns of multi-word sequences, leading to the view that these multi-word sequences–rather than single words–may form the basic building blocks of native-like language learning and use. How does the cognitive system coordinate the trade-off between the re-use of pre-stored multi-word sequences and the productive generation of novel linguistic expressions? 

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🌱Sample paper: Processing binomial phrases with variant conjunctions

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3.  Misinterpretations in language comprehension

The meaning of a sentence or discourse is determined by its grammatical structure, yet sometimes people form mental representations that are incomplete or outright incompatible with those structures. Misinterpretations tend to occur in sentences that are syntactically complex, such as the passive voice which mentions the "receiver" before the "actor" of the action (e.g., the mouse was chased by the cat). How, when, and why do misinterpretations occur, and how are these conflicts resolved during comprehension?

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🌱Sample paper: Using nonce words to investigate the misinterpretation of implausible events

🌱PhD dissertation: Competing interpretations in the processing of noncanonical syntactic structures

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4.  Language and cognitive functions in healthy cognitive aging

Healthy aging is associated with gradual changes in sensory and cognitive functioning. Language functions are relatively well-preserved relative to other aspects of cognition (e.g., processing speed, working memory capacity, inhibition), yet some evidence suggests that certain aspects of language abilities may decline with age. For instance, speech fluency may decrease over the lifespan, reflecting the underlying age-related changes in cognitive functioning. How does the speech production system change over the lifespan, and how is it affected by other concurrent age-related changes in cognitive function? 

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🌱Sample paper: Rate of disfluencies across the lifespan

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5.  Assessing language and cognitive functions in Thai population

Standard cognitive assessments tend to be developed in the context of Western cultures, but translated versions of these assessments–especially tests with verbal components–may not always be culturally appropriate, valid, or reliable in non-Western cultures. Therefore, it is crucial to develop better assessments of language and cognitive functions  for the Thai population that ensure cultural appropriateness, validity, and reliability.

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🌱Ongoing projects: 

• Thai lexical decision test (collaboration with Dr. Graham Pluck)

• Cognitive assessment battery for Thai children (collaboration with RinCO/CoALa)

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6. Neurophysiological mechanisms of spoken language comprehension

Research on the neural correlates of language processing has mostly focused on event-related potentials (ERP), which are neural responses averaged across multiple trials in the same experimental condition. Various language-related ERP components have been identified, including the N400 and the P600. A complementary measure to ERPs is neural oscillations, which are non-phase-locked responses that can be decomposed into different frequencies across time, providing an alternative way of analyzing the EEG signal. More recently, neural oscillations have been theorized to synchronize or entrain to acoustic aspects of the speech signal that convey linguistically meaningful features (e.g., rhythmic amplitude modulations that correspond to syllables or phonemes). The hypothesis, therefore, is that the brain can efficiently and rapidly process the complex speech signal by aligning its pattern of neural excitability to match the most informative parts in the signal. Nevertheless, there is ongoing debate about the causal role of neural entrainment in the temporal prediction and segmentation of speech.

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🌱Sample paper: Bridging signal processing and sentence processing research on cortical tracking of speech (review article)

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7.  The interface between affective and linguistic processing

Language is an integral part of humans’ socio-cultural lives, enabling us to communicate, cooperate, and form social bonds with each other. Our social interactions are also deeply intertwined with our experience of emotions. And yet, neurocognitive research on emotions and language has largely been separated, even though abundant research has shown that emotions do interact with various other cognitive domains (perception, attention, memory, reasoning, decision-making). How are emotions conveyed through language?  How and when does affective processing interact with language processing (e.g., lexical, semantic, syntactic), and what brain regions and mechanisms are involved?