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What goes on in your mind as you speak and understand? My research aims to understand the cognitive processes behind language. In particular, I am interested in how we use language in context. As listeners, we have to contend with the fact that language is ambiguous, noisy, and by itself is insufficient to fully determine the speaker’s meaning. This means we need to pull together information from different sources — speech, gestures, inferences from the context, judgments about the speaker’s mental state, and world knowledge. I want to know how we do this and how quickly. As speakers, we make hundreds of choices every time we open our mouth. What information guides these choices?

In a current NSF-funded project, I am testing how statistical learning guides pronoun comprehension. Do people keep track of the regularities in discourse structure and use this to facilitate pronoun comprehension? For example, speakers tend to frequently re-mention grammatical subjects.  We also know that comprehenders tend to associate pronouns with grammatical subjects (e.g. in Ana ate lunch with Liz. She…; people associate she with Ana). Recent findings (Williams & Arnold, in prep) show that if you expose people to numerous stories where pronouns refer to the nonsubject,  the subject bias is reduced, whereas it is strengthened by exposure to stories where pronouns refer to the subject. We are testing what types of generalizations people can learn, and how long they last.

In another NSF-funded project, I am testing how pronoun comprehension is guided by gestures and individual differences, and testing whether predictability explains all of these effects. Other ongoing research interests include understanding how speakers choose between pronouns and more explicit expressions, or how disfluency guides comprehension.

My primary appointment is in the Cognitive Psychology program, but I also do some work on language development. Graduate students wishing to work in my lab may apply to either the Cognitive or Developmental programs. Members of under-represented minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

Selected Publications: Reference Production

  • Arnold, J. E. & Zerkle, S. (in press). Why do people produce pronouns? Pragmatic selection vs. rational models. Journal of Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience.
  • Rosa, E. C., & Arnold, J. E. (2017). Predictability affects production: Thematic roles can affect reference form selection.  Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 43-60. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2016.07.007 [PREPRINT]- final accepted manuscript]; see also Arnold_TechReport1_2017
  • Arnold, J. E. & Watson, D. G. (2015). Synthesizing meaning and processing approaches to prosody: performance matters. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 30, 88-102. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2013.840733
  • Arnold, J.E., Kahn, J. & Pancani, G. (2012). Audience Design Affects Acoustic Reduction Via Production Facilitation. Psychological Bulletin and Review, 19, 505-512. VIDEO

Selected Publications: Reference Comprehension

  • Arnold, J. E., Strangmann, I., Hwang, H., Zerkle, S., & Nappa, R. (2018). Linguistic experience affects pronoun interpretation. Journal of Memory and Language, 102, 41-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.05.002.
  • Nappa, R., & Arnold, J. E. (2014). The road to understanding is paved with the speaker’s intentions: Cues to the speaker’s attention and intentions affect pronoun comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 70, 58–81 [VIDEOS OF STIMULI]
  • Arnold, J.E. & Lao, S. C. (2015). Effects of psychological attention on pronoun comprehension. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2015.1017511
  • Arnold, J. E., Altmann, R., Fagnano, M., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2004). The Old and Thee, uh, New. Psychological Science. 578-582.

Selected Publications: Language Development

  • Arnold, J. E., Castro-Schilo, L., Zerkle, S., & Rao, L. (in press). Print exposure predicts pronoun comprehension strategies in children. Journal of Child Language.
  • Arnold, J. E., Bennetto, L., & Diehl, J. J. (2009). Reference production in young speakers with and without autism: Effects of discourse status and processing constraints. Cognition, 110(2), 131-146. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.10.016
  • Arnold, J. E., Brown-Schmidt, S., & Trueswell, J. (2007). Children’s use of gender and order-of-mention during pronoun comprehension. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22(4), 527-565. doi:10.1080/01690960600845950

Experimental Materials