PhD Studentships available at UConn Psychology

[Whitney Tabor]

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          GRADUATE TRAINING IN LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
              AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

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Opportunities abound at the University of Connecticut
(UConn) for qualified students to pursue graduate
studies in Language and Cognition leading to the Ph.D.
in Experimental Psychology.   At least 4 PhD
studentships will begin in Fall, 2002.   Speech
perception and production, the reading process and the
development of reading skills, sentence processing,
and ecological studies of perception and action have
long been areas of research strength at UConn within
Psychology and related departments.   A unique
synthesis is now occurring between the ecological
work, which has focused on dynamical models of human
movement, and the language work, which uses closely
related connectionist models to study language as
action.   An important element in the mix is Haskins
Laboratories, an independent research lab located
nearby in New Haven,  which, for over 65 years, has
sustained an environment of intellectual
cross-pollination and has made many breakthroughs in
research on speech and reading.

See the Language and Cognition Program Web Page for
more details:

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~ps300vc/LangandCog/langandcog.html

For admission guidelines and to download application
forms, see:

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/

and

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/GradAd.html

To obtain a printed brochure and a set of application
materials, write, telephone, fax, or email:

Gina Belz, Department of Psychology, University of
Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1030, Storrs, CT
06269-1030

Important deadline:

January 15:  Graduate Applications due.

Phone: (860) 486-3528
FAX: (860) 486-2760
E-Mail:  futuregr at psych.psy.uconn.edu

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Description of the Program in Language and Cognition:

The Program in Language and Cognition focuses on those
aspects of language that make it a uniquely versatile
vehicle for communication and thought. There is thus a
strong focus on the dynamical aspects of language,
including experimental studies of language processing,
learning, and change at the phoneme, word, and
sentence level, modeling of language processes using
artificial neural (connectionist) networks and
symbolic computational models, and mathematical
analysis using dynamical systems theory and
statistics.  There is particular interest in an
ecological approach, which emphasizes continual
interaction between speaker/hearers and their
environments.  There is much interest in the
biological basis of language, both in pursuit of
innate endowment questions and in studies of neural
mechanisms using state-of-the-art neuroimaging tools. 
The group has long conducted basic research on the
reading process; some members of the group are also
engaged in the translation of research findings to the
classroom.

The Program has close ties to the Center for the Study
of Perception and Action
(CESPA---http://ione.psy.uconn.edu/~cespaweb/), the
Developmental and Behavioral Neuroscience Divisions in
the Dept. of Psychology
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/), the Linguistics
Department (http://vm.uconn.edu/~wwwling/), and the
Cognitive Science Focus (http://cogsci.uconn.edu/) at
the University of Connecticut.  In addition, Haskins
Laboratories (http://www.haskins.yale.edu), located
nearby in New Haven, provides a stimulating
environment for research and training.

The program prepares students for careers in research
and teaching. A student's research activity begins
immediately on entry to the program. In addition,
three courses are typically taken each semester. A
student's schedule also includes attendance at
colloquia and informal weekly group meetings for
discussion of problems in theory and research. Course
work for the Ph.D. degree can often be completed in
two-and-a-half to three years. Another year or two is
needed to complete the dissertation. Applicants should
have an excellent academic record. Research experience
is helpful but not necessary. Applicants may have an
undergraduate major in psychology, linguistics,
computer science, mathematics, cognitive science, or
other related fields of study. 

*****

CAROL FOWLER
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/Faculty/Fowler/Fowler.html),
Professor of Psychology. Dr. Fowler works on speech
perception and production within the developing
direct-realist framework. In addition, she has begun
collaborative research on cross-person coordination
and cooperation in language use. This is part of an
effort to develop an ecological theory of
language-that is, an understanding of how language is
used in ordinary contexts in which speech occurs. Dr.
Fowler is the Director of Haskins Laboratories.

LEONARD KATZ
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/Faculty/Katz/Katz.html),
Professor of Psychology. Dr. Katz studies reading,
focusing on the process of printed word recognition.
Cross-language experiments are often used to reveal in
which ways word recognition is shaped by a language's
particular characteristics and in which ways it is
more general.  Languages studied include English,
Hebrew, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. In
addition, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
studies (carried out in conjunction with Haskins
Laboratories and Yale Medical School) explore the
brain mechanisms that support the word recognition
process. Finally, behavioral experiments in English
are used to study the effects on word recognition of
the reader's lexicon (i.e., neighborhood factors) and
reader strategies.

JAY RUECKL
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/Faculty/Rueckl/Rueckl.html),
Associate Professor of Psychology. A primary goal of
Dr. Rueckl's research is to use connectionist networks
to forge a link between theories of implicit memory
and models of word identification. His research
focuses on the interaction of phonological,
morphological, and semantic factors in the influence
of implicit memory on work identification in reading,
the role of perceptual detail (e.g. the
characteristics of a speaker's voice) in visual and
spoken word identification. In addition, together with
his colleagues at Haskins Laboratories, Dr. Rueckl has
recently begun to apply artificial neural network
models to the investigation of the cognitive
neuropsychology of reading.

DONALD SHANKWEILER
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/Faculty/Shankweiler/Shankweiler.html),
Professor of Psychology. The broad aim of Dr.
Shankweiler's research is to understand how the
language apparatus, which is biologically specialized
for speech, becomes adapted to reading and writing. In
studies carried out in the 1970's, he and Dr. I. Y.
Liberman discovered that there is an important
association between children's abilities to analyze
speech into its components (phonemes, syllables, and
morphemes) and their progress in reading. Recent
research has pursued the implications of this
association for the operation of short-term verbal
memory; for children who lack phonologically analytic
skills, short-term memory function is also impaired.
Dr. Shankweiler, with Stephen Crain and their
students, have developed a model of the role of
short-term memory in language comprehension.  

WHITNEY TABOR
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~ps300vc/tabor.html),
Assistant Professor of Psychology. Dr. Tabor's
research focuses on the coexistence of structure and
flexibility in complex systems.    He uses artificial
neural networks and dynamical systems theory to
develop models of human language processing, learning,
and change.    He has worked on the role of semantic
information in sentence processing, evidence for
ungrammatical influences in sentence processing,
attractor models of syntactic category structure, the
learning of complex phrase structure grammars, and the
evolution of grammatical categories over historical
time.

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AFFILIATED FACULTY

CLAUDIA CARELLO, Professor of Psychology, Director of
CESPA: Ecological study of human movement, printed
word recognition in English, Korean, Serbo-Croatian.

ROGER CHAFFIN, Professor of Psychology (Hartford):
Semantic memory, memory for skilled performance.

ELENA LEVY, Associate Professor of Psychology
(Stamford): Language and gesture, language
development.

DIANE LILLO-MARTIN, Professor of Linguistics and
Psychology: The structure of American Sign Language,
its acquisition and processing, and the processes deaf
people use to read. 

GEORGIJE LUKATELA, Visiting Professor: The
phonological basis of printed word recognition. 

LETITIA NAIGLES, Associate Professor of Psychology:
Language acquisition, word learning.

KENNETH PUGH, Associate Professor, Yale University and
Haskins Laboratories: Brain imaging studies of
reading.

WILLIAM SNYDER, Assistant Professor of Linguistics:
Cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition;
sentence processing.

MICHAEL TURVEY, Professor of Psychology: Ecological
study of human movement, the phonological basis of
printed word recognition.



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UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
LANGUAGE AND COGNITION PROGRAM
GRADUATE TRAINING ANNOUNCEMENT

For more information, write to:

          Claudia Carello
          Department of Psychology
          University of Connecticut
          406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020
          Storrs, CT 06269-1020

          Phone: (860) 486-3529
          E-mail: CESPA1 at uconnvm.uconn.edu

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=====
Whitney Tabor                        (860) 486-4910 (office)
Department of Psychology             (860) 486-2760 (fax)
University of Connecticut            (860) 486-6080 (lab)
Storrs, CT  06269-1020               tabor at uconnvm.uconn.edu
USA                                  WAB Room 124 (office)

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwpsyc/Faculty/Tabor/Tabor.html

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