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What We Do

The research in the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Cornell University is conducted within a unified framework for understanding language across multiple time-scales: the time-scale of thousands of years, over which languages themselves evolve; the time-scale of years, over which children acquire the language of their community; and the time-scale of seconds, in which particular utterances are spoken and understood. We aim to produce a comprehensive account of language evolution, acquisition and processing based on evidence from a variety of methods, including neuroimaging, molecular genetics, eye-tracking, behavioral experiments, corpus analyses, and computational modeling as well as from different subject populations, ranging from infants to adults with and without language impairments.

News

Dr. Christiansen and Dr. Richerson (UC Davis) will co-chair an Ernst Strüngmann Forum on Cultural Evolution, Frankfurt, Germany, May 27 - June 2, 2012.

Dr. Christiansen will be a Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, March 23 to April 12, 2012, delivering 4 seminars and a public lecture.

A Spanish translation of the Beckner et al. (2009) position paper, Language is a complex adaptive system, which appeared in Language Learning, is now available: La lengua es un sistema adaptativo complejo, courtesy of Francisco Moreno Fernández.

The Cornell Chronicle published a piece on Dr. Christiansen's recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology - General: Word sounds contain clues for language learners on September 12, 2011. This research was also featured on the website of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University as well as in Science Now.

Dr. Christiansen was interviewed for an in-depth article on sound symbolism in the August 2011 issue of NewScientist (Magazine issue 2821).

Dr. Christiansen and Dr. Fitneva co-chaired a symposium, From Sound to Meaning: New Insights into the Role of Sound Symbolism in Language Acquisition at the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Montreal, Quebec, July 21, 2011.

Congrats to Branden Bryan, undergraduate research assistant, who will be a graduate student in Cognitive Science at Indiana University fall 2011.

News Archive

Upcoming Talks

B. Winter & M.H. Christiansen: Robustness as a Design Feature of Speech Communication. Paper to be presented at the 8th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, Kyoto, Japan, March 2012.

A. Baronchelli, N. Chater, R. Pastor-Satorras & M.H. Christiansen: Reconciling the Diversity of Languages with the Biological Uniformity of their Speakers. Paper to be presented at the 8th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, Kyoto, Japan, March 2012.

M.H. Christiansen: Language Intertwined across Multiple Timescales: Evolution, Acquisition and Processing. Advanced Seminars in Linguistics lecture series to be delivered at the University of Hong Kong, March 26, 28, 30 and April 3, 2012.

M.H. Christiansen: Darwin’s Insight: The Cultural Evolution of Language. Visiting Professor public lecture to be presented at the University of Hong Kong, April 10, 2012.

M.H. Christiansen: Brains, Genes, and Language Evolution. Invited colloquium to be presented at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan, April 13, 2012.

M.H. Christiansen: Language Acquisition Meets Language Evolution. Invited colloquium to be presented at the the Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, June 7, 2012.

M.H. Christiansen: Brains, Genes, and Language Evolution. Invited colloquium to be presented in the University Seminar on Language and Cognition series at Columbia University, New York City, NY, September 20, 2012.

Recent Journal Papers

Heimbauer, L.A., Conway, C.M., Christiansen, M.H., Beran, M.J. & Owren, M.J. (in press). A Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task with symmetrical joystick responding for nonhuman primates. Behavior Research Methods.

de Vries, M.H., Geukes, S., Zwitserlood, P., Petersson, K.M. & Christiansen, M.H. (in press). Processing multiple non-adjacent dependencies: Evidence from sequence learning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Christiansen, M.H., Conway, C.M & Onnis, L. (2012). Similar neural correlates for language and sequential learning: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 231-256.

Misyak, J.B. & Christiansen, M.H. (2012). Statistical learning and language: An individual differences study. Language Learning, 62, 302-331.

Christiansen, M.H., Reali, F. & Chater, N. (2011). Biological adaptations for functional features of language in the face of cultural evolution. Human Biology, 83, 247-259.

de Vries, M.H., Christiansen, M.H. & Petersson, K.M. (2011). Learning recursion: Multiple nested and crossed dependencies. Biolinguistics, 5, 10-35.

Emberson, L.L., Conway, C.M. & Christiansen, M.H. (2011). Timing is everything: Changes presentation timing have opposite effects on auditory and visual implicit statistical learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 1021-1040.

Farmer, T.A., Monaghan, P., Misyak, J.B. & Christiansen, M.H. (2011). Phonological typicality influences sentence processing in predictive contexts: A reply to Staub et al. (2009). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 37, 1318-1325.

Fitneva, S.A. & Christiansen, M.H. (2011). Looking in the wrong direction correlates with more accurate word learning. Cognitive Science, 35, 367-380.

Monaghan, P., Christiansen, M.H. & Fitneva, S.A. (2011). The arbitrariness of the sign: Learning advantages from the structure of the vocabulary. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 325-347.

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