Communication electrified - towards a natural investigation of real-time language processing (2020-2028)
Language processing is typically investigated in the lab under highly controlled circumstances and the question arises whether the findings mirror language processing in the ‘real world’. While the examination of sentence processing has advanced in recent decades, the study of larger communicative exchanges has been considerably neglected. With the advent of Experimental Pragmatics a first step has been made to shift attention to speaker intentions in communication. Experimental Pragmatics is a young discipline that brings together insights from pragmatic theory – the study of how language is used – with experimental approaches. This interdisciplinary enterprise is aimed to improve theories of language use and to formulate cognitively and neurobiologically plausible models of language processing. To date the majority of research in this area is concerned with speech or text passages that are 2-3 sentences long. Yet a systematic investigation of conversational settings in which two interlocutors interact with each other is missing. In addition, our knowledge of real-time language processing – i.e. the dynamic and incremental construction of meaning – is still limited. Through the establishment of an interactive EEG lab, new territory will be entered by providing a research infrastructure to investigate real-time language use in more interactive, more naturalistic and more engaging situations.
With the interactive EEG lab, the study of real-time language processing will be approached from an entirely new angle. The interactive EEG lab will (i) facilitate the study of language in interaction by affording participants to communicate in more naturalistic situations. These situations will (ii) make available shared knowledge and common communicative goals among interlocutors who engage in face to face communication. The lab will further (iii) provide an experimental setting for wireless electrophysiological recordings (EEG) that allow for high temporal resolution of the underlying cognitive processes coupled with mobile eye tracking data. In the future, this research infrastructure may also (iv) foster the recording and analysis of additional cues such as gestural or facial cues. Overall the interactive EEG lab will make it possible to investigate language use in a more integrated manner.
Members:
Petra Schumacher, Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur I
Ingmar Brillmayer, Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur I
Student Members:
Hanna Buhl
Zoe Eder
Zhasmina Ergasheva
Sophie Sprengel
Robert Voigt
