My research investigates how people learn to use language to convey information about perceived events. This research investigates language learning in both children and adults, with the goal of understanding how children and adults differ in their language learning competencies and language learning strategies. A better understanding of these differences could allow for the creation of better ...

Three experiments assessed how speakers avoid linguistically and nonlinguistically ambiguous expressions. Speakers described target objects (a flying mammal, bat) in contexts including foil objects that caused linguistic (a baseball bat) and nonlinguistic (a larger flying mammal) ambiguity. Speakers sometimes avoided linguistic-ambiguity, and they did so equally regardless of whether they also ...

The question of whether language affects nonlinguistic processes remains unresolved. Whereas many studies find that effects of language on such processes are disrupted when verbalization is inhibited, others show that they persist. We explored individual differences in the tendency to verbalize as a potential resolution to this discrepancy. We hypothesized that if language is spontaneously acce...

Some languages describe musical pitch in terms of spatial height; others in terms of thickness. Differences in pitch metaphors also shape adults’ nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. At the same time, 4-month-old infants have both types of space-pitch mappings available. This tension between prelinguistic space-pitch associations and their subsequent linguistic mediation raises questions ...

adopting a humanistic, communicative-based approach to semiotics, this paper aims at investigating the status of linguistic signs and their interaction with other communicative signs. the status of linguistic sign is first studied in semiotic theories spanning ancient, middle ages and modern era. based on the commonalities envisaged in four contemporary semiotic theories done in the spirit of t...

UNLABELLED The relation between other aspects of cognition and language status of individuals with aphasia is not well-established, although there is some evidence that integrity of non-linguistic skills of attention, memory, executive function and visuospatial skills can not be predicted on the basis of aphasia severity. At the same time, there is a growing realization among rehabilitation spe...

Speech signal is a rich source of information and convey more than spoken words, and can be divided into two main groups: linguistic and nonlinguistic. The linguistic aspects of speech include the properties of the speech signal and word sequence and deal with what is being said. The nonlinguistic properties of speech have more to do with talker attributes such as age, gender, dialect, and emot...

This paper discusses the conceptualization of turn directions along traveled routes. Foremost, we are interested in the influence that language has on the conceptualization of turn directions. Two experiments are presented that contrast the way people group turns into similarity classes when they expect to verbally label the turns, as compared to when they do not. We are particularly interested...