Integrative mechanisms in real-time spoken language processing

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Spoken language is produced and understood at a striking pace. For example, words in fluent speech are often produced at a rate of 2 or 3 per second, and many core linguistic distinctions (such as the physical properties that distinguish different speech sounds) hinge on timing differences involving just tens of milliseconds. How does the human mind cope with the dynamics of language? For example, during listening, how does our mental machinery manage to keep up with the pace at which information arrives in an unfolding utterance? The ongoing goals of my research program are to understand the cognitive mechanisms that allow language processing to occur rapidly, incrementally, and with a high degree of efficiency and accuracy. To date this work has highlighted the way in which robust interpretation depends in part on a listener's implicit expectations about the form and content of what will be said next. In addition, this work has provided solid evidence for listeners' use of informational cues from the physical context in which spoken communication occurs. Going forward, one critical objective is to ensure that empirical investigations of language processing reflect the many complex and intricate features of natural language as well as the different kinds of situational circumstances that can make listeners more or less attentive to speech, or that make listening more or less difficult such as environmental noise or a listener's status as a native or non-native user of the language. The proposed research aims to explore language comprehension in these types of scenarios using eye-tracking techniques that have been successfully employed in my laboratory to study the moment-by-moment nature of language processes at the millisecond level. The outcomes of this research are expected to provide important insights into the cognitive mechanisms that support core language abilities. This research will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of communicative impairments as well as the features of natural communicative behaviour that should be emphasized in situations involving human-computer interaction.