His research tends to be in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy
of language. In epistemology he is currently defending "tracking
theories" which say that, under the right cognitive and environmental
conditions, one has knowledge when one's true beliefs track the truth. In
philosophy of mind, he defends naturalized theories of meaning or semantics.
These views are tied very closely to the former views in epistemology and say
that structures in the mind acquire their meaning by, basically, tracking
objects, properties, and relations in one's environment. And in philosophy of
language, he also defends theories which trace the meanings of words and
language to relations with one's environment.
Dr. Case's research in cognitive science has two parts.
One part of his cognitive science related research is within
computational learning theory
(COLT),
the mathematical study
of the capabilities and limits of machines to learn, from relevant
data, rules for computing functions or for recognizing concepts.
His work in
COLT
employs such tools from mathematical logic as
recursive function theory and
machine
self-reference, and he is
also interested in the latter as a model of machine self-knowledge.
Another part of his work involves discrete, analog simulations on
lattice-connected
computers to model spatial reasoning and mental
image manipulation.
Dr. Chester studies some of the knowledge representation issues regarding the integration of linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge. A computer vision project extracts information from bar charts and line charts for use by an interactive dialog system. An image query project ties together the problems of representing the ambiguous meanings of natural language with those of representing the information content of images.
Dr. Cole's area of specialization is comparative syntax. He is currently especially interested in the syntax of the Austronesian languages of Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as in Chinese dialects, the Quechua languages and Hebrew. Research in Indonesia is supported by the National Science Foundation and by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. In addition to syntax per se, he has written extensively on semantics and pragmatics, and has a strong interest in a variety of topics in cognitive science such as the comparison of cognition in humans and other primates and the evolution of cognition.
The ability to use a human language rests on a number of prior achievements. Dr. Golinkoff is known for her work on tracing the development of these early processes as well as for the creation of methodologies that allow us to probe infants' knowledge about language before they can talk. Among her current projects are studies that mirror the steps infants must go through to learn their native language. First, babies must segment the sound stream to find its units. Dr. Golinkoff has studied how babies use the prosody of the sentence (work with Anthony Alioto, a former undergraduate student) as well as their own names and other familiar words as a wedge into the speech stream. With Stephanie Baker (her former doctoral student from Linguistics), she found that hearing babies perceive sign language categorically at 4 months of age, but lose this capability by 14 months. Second, babies must be able to categorize the units they uncover in the language that surrounds them. Her laboratory continues to work on the question of how toddlers uncover the form class of individual words and whether they rely on a word's morphological endings to do so. Third, Dr. Golinkoff is particularly interested in the knowledge that undergirds the use of verbs. As verbs label events, and are the part of speech around which the sentence is constructed, babies must be able to analyze events. One example comes from work with her former Linguistics student Rachel Pulverman. They found that infants (both English- and Spanish-reared) as young as 7 months can distinguish between different manners (e.g., running versus walking) and different paths (e.g., over versus under) in ongoing nonlinguistic events. Finally, Dr. Golinkoff has asked questions about the grammatical and prosodic information in the input that children use to learn new verbs. That work is in collaboration with Khara Pence (a former student) and Amanda Brandone. Dr. Golinkoff will give the keynote address at the Boston Child Language meeting in 2006. Her work has also been featured on Good Morning America and in numerous radio and print media outlets.
Dr. Hermon is interested in syntactic theory and first language acquisition and theories of second language acquisition. Some courses she teaches: Principles and Parameters in First Language Acquisition; The Acquisition of Syntax; Syntactic Theories; Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism.
Dr. Hoffman does research in the area of visual cognition, particularly on the mechanisms of visual attention, using eye movements and event-related brain potentials. he is also doing research on Williams Syndrome, a genetic deficit that results in severely impaired visuo-spatial ability with relatively intact language. Dr. Hoffman's research is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, The National Science Foundation, and the March of Dimes.
Dr. McLaughlin is interested in aesthetic experience. His research is primarily focused on responses to visual art and explores the impact of variables such as compositional configuration on different subgroups of observers, e.g., novices vs. experts or right- vs. left-handers. Past results indicate, among other things, that patterns of differential lateral cerebral specialization contribute to aesthetic preferences. Memory for aesthetically-important qualities is also under examination at the present time.
Mosberg, Ludwig
His research interests are in the area of human information processing,
particularly in language comprehension and the acquisition of knowledge.
Present research is on cognitive processing strategies of reading and
listening in academically successful dyslexic adults.
Dr. Murray is working on two long-term research programs
regarding elementary school children. These concern how a young pupil
acquires the idea that some events are necessary rather than contingent and
an investigation of the important role of social interaction in
facilitating the development of these and other ideas. He has also been
active in several national educational reform movements, most recently a
new national approach to the accreditation of teacher education
programs.
How do children learn language? How do adults process the linguistic structures they hear? And how do categories of linguistic meaning relate to categories in nonlinguistic cognition in both children and adults? Research in Dr. Papafragou's lab approaches these topics with a range of formal tools drawn from linguistic theories of meaning and empirical methods from developmental psycholinguistics. Some of the languages we have studied include English, Greek, Korean and Tseltal (Mayan). Specific areas of interest include the linguistic and cognitive representation of motion and space, quantity and number and mental states in both adults and children.
Last updated on 05/21/05