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Quantifying semantic predictability and its role in language comprehension and production

Cassandra Jacobs

Humanities Center Room D

Human language processing similarly depends on the inter-relationships between words as well as hierarchical structure. Indeed, rational approaches to cognition posit that hierarchical processing should be preferred in cases of linguistic uncertainty. In this talk, I will show how we can estimate the probabilities of quasi-semantic categories and how these influence both human production times and eye movements during naturalistic sentence reading.

Dr. Cass Jacobs (they/them) is a cognitive scientist and Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo, where they run the Computational Linguistics and Cognition (CaLiCo) Lab. They use computational modeling and behavioral experiments to understand the cognitive processes that support language comprehension and production, particularly the way that learning and memory shape human linguistic knowledge.

This event will take place in person and via zoom. If participating online, please register in advance:

https://rochester.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcsd-iuqD8tG9SEvQTZ9m9LcikHj4bJCYHE