Ariel Goldberg
Research/Areas of Interest
Psychology of Language, Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, Sign Language, Computational Modeling, Computational Simulation, Written Language, Reading, Spelling
Education
- PhD, Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States, 2010
- MA, Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, United States, 2005
- BA, Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania, United States, 2003
- BA, Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, United States, 2003
Biography
My research focuses on the mental lexicon: how words are represented and organized in the mind, and how that organization shapes the way we produce and understand language. I study single-word processing across modalities, in both comprehension and production of spoken, written, and signed language. Comparing modalities reveals which properties of the lexicon are general to language and which depend on the way a language is expressed. My lab combines psycholinguistic experiments, phonetic measurements, corpus analyses, case studies, and computational modeling, with the ultimate aim of connecting psycholinguistic and linguistic theories of language processing.
Some of the questions I ask are:
The Signed Lexicon
How is the signed lexicon organized, and how do phonological neighborhood density, iconicity, and childhood language experience affect sign recognition?
Is iconicity an organizing principle of the lexicon?
How can we best measure the phonological similarity between signs?
Morphological and Phonological Processing
How are multimorphemic words, like jumped or shyness, represented in memory, and when do speakers draw on morpheme-based versus whole-word representations?
Do words assembled from parts sound different from words that are not, and can listeners use those phonetic cues to detect a word's structure before it is complete?
How are a word's sounds planned for production, and how do word-specific and abstract knowledge shape grammatical sound patterns?
Written Language
How do spellers keep the letters of a word in the correct order?
How do learners acquire letter-sound mappings in a new writing system, and how do context, complexity, and prior knowledge affect that learning?
How does a word's structure shape the experience of reading, including the colors that people with synesthesia perceive?
Lexical Activation and Working Memory
Is lexical activation independent of other cognitive systems, or does phonological load in working memory change how related words become active and compete?
Some of the questions I ask are:
The Signed Lexicon
How is the signed lexicon organized, and how do phonological neighborhood density, iconicity, and childhood language experience affect sign recognition?
Is iconicity an organizing principle of the lexicon?
How can we best measure the phonological similarity between signs?
Morphological and Phonological Processing
How are multimorphemic words, like jumped or shyness, represented in memory, and when do speakers draw on morpheme-based versus whole-word representations?
Do words assembled from parts sound different from words that are not, and can listeners use those phonetic cues to detect a word's structure before it is complete?
How are a word's sounds planned for production, and how do word-specific and abstract knowledge shape grammatical sound patterns?
Written Language
How do spellers keep the letters of a word in the correct order?
How do learners acquire letter-sound mappings in a new writing system, and how do context, complexity, and prior knowledge affect that learning?
How does a word's structure shape the experience of reading, including the colors that people with synesthesia perceive?
Lexical Activation and Working Memory
Is lexical activation independent of other cognitive systems, or does phonological load in working memory change how related words become active and compete?