Language production and comprehension

How speakers retrieve appropriate words from the thousands they know? Comprehension and production processes are intertwined? Which is the role of prediction in language processing? For answering these questions, behavioral and ERP measures are used.
If you are interested, contact Prof. Peressotti or Prof. Navarrete

Deafness and sign language

This research line is focused on how the linguistic system is shaped in order to process sign language, both at the neural and the functional level. This is a theoretical interesting issue since it would reveal whether there are -and which are- the “universal” structures devoted to language processing that are independent from input and output modality. This research line has also important outcomes for the deaf community, since it shows which are the relevant cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting sign language and in what respect sign language might support spoken language acquisition.
If you are interested, contact Prof. Peressotti or Prof. Navarrete

Bilingualism and cognitive consequences of bilingualism

Nowadays the large majority of people can speak more than one language. Often the second language is learned quite late in life, when formal learning in school starts. How the linguistic system is shaped by bilingualism? Are there consequences at other cognitive levels, such as perception of risk, moral judgments, and economic decisions, due to the use of a second language? Is bimodal (a signed and a spoken language) bilingualism different from unimodal (two spoken languages) bilingualism?
If you are interested, contact Prof. Peressotti or Prof. Navarrete

Bilingualism and dialects

To what extent using a dialect might be considered a form of bilingualism? To what extent the same phenomena shown for bilinguals may be extended to people that speaks a formal language and a dialect? Does dialect use modulate the way in which risk is perceived, events are morally judged, and decisions are made?
If you are interested, contact Prof. Peressotti or Prof. Navarrete

Writing and reading processes and the new technology

Tablets, cellular phones, computers are used by the large majority of population on a daily basis. Are cognitive processes shaped by the use of such media? One of the research lines focuses on typewriting and analyze how language production processes unfold using EEG measures.
If you are interested, contact Prof. Peressotti or Prof. Navarrete

Neural entrainment to sentences and phrases

In EEG experiments sequences of syllables will be presented either written or spoken and we will compare sequences which produce meaningful and correct phrases and sentences with random ones. We expect that peaks in the EEG signal at frequency of phrase and sentence stimulation could correlate with different aspects of  the structural and lexical material. These predictions will be based both on principled factors and distributional properties of language which can be captured by computational linguistics methods.

If you are interested, contact Prof. Vespignani