Thomas Farmer graduated Magna Cum Laude from James Madison University in Virginia with a B. A. in Psychology. In 2003, Thomas also completed a Masters Degree in Psychological Science from James Madison University. This is his third year in The Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Cornell University where he is pursuing work on his Ph. D.
Thomas's primary interests center around language comprehension. More specifically, Thomas is interested in collecting behavioral and neuropsychological data from human sentence processing experiments with the goal of advancing the architectural specification of the language comprehension system. He is currently working with Dr. Christiansen on experiments related to multiple cue integration. Distributional, phonological, and semantic cues are the focus of their current projects. Additionally, Thomas is collaborating with Dr. Karen Kemtes at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas on projects relating to the influence of variables such as discourse context, experience, and cognitive aging on human sentence processing.
Recently, under the direction of Michael Spivey, and in conjunction with fellow graduate student Sarah Cargill, Thomas has been exploring the degree to which computer-mouse trajectories are indicative of the continuity of syntactic processing, and the degree to which they illustrate the graded nature of "garden-pathing." Moreover, this work has been extended to on-line language processing in young children (4-5 year-olds), whereby we are investigating the source(s) and nature of individual differences in susceptibility to garden-path effects (in collaboration with Michael Goldstein and Jennifer Schwade of the Cornell B.A.B.Y. lab).
Other research interests include: the overlap between comprehension and production, applied statistical techniques, measurement theory, and the connectionist modeling of language comprehension and language evolution.
In the rare event that one cannot find Thomas in the lab, he is probably out running, traveling, listening to music, at a concert, or watching a movie.
PAPERS
Farmer, T. A., Cargill, S. A., & Spivey, M. J. (in press). Gradiency and visual context in syntactic garden-paths. To appear in Journal of Memory and Language.
Farmer, T. A., Cargill, S. A., Hindy, N. C., Dale, R., & Spivey, M. J. (in press). Tracking the continuity of language comprehension: Computer mouse-trajectories suggest parallel syntactic processing. To appear in Cognitive Science.
Mittelberg, I., Farmer, T. A., & Waugh, L. R. (in press). They actually said that? An introduction to working with usage data through discourse and corpus analysis. To appear in
M. Gonzalez-Marquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: Ithaca. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins.
Cargill, S. A., Farmer, T. A., Schwade, J., Goldstein, M., & Spivey, M. J. (in press). Individual differences in linguistic experience influence children's processing of complex sentences: New evidence from a new technique.
To appear in Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Monaghan, P. (2006). Phonological typicality influences on-line sentence comprehension. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 12203-12208.
Farmer, T. A., Cargill, S. A., Hindy, N. C., Dale, R., & Spivey, M. J. (2006). Streaming x, y coordinates imply continuous interaction during on-line syntactic processing.
In Proceedings of the Twenty-Eight Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.208-213). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. [Download] Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Kemtes, K. A. (2005). Sentence processing in context: The impact of experience on individual differences. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh
Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.642-647). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. [Download] PAPERS SUBMITTED OR IN PROGRESS
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., Kemtes, K. A., & Schroeder, P. (in progress). Evidence for a language comprehension system driven by experience. PRESENTATIONS
Farmer, T. A. (2007). Children look, children do: Eye and hand movements elucidate childhood syntactic processing. Organizer and chair of this symposium, presented at the 2007 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting. Boston, MA.
Cargill, S. A., Farmer, T. A., Schwade, J., Goldstein, M., & Spivey, M. J. (2007). The apple of my eye and ear: New insights into children's syntactic processing from mouse-tracking and individual differences. Paper presented at the 2007 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting. Boston, MA.
Farmer, T. A., Cargill, S. A., & Spivey, M. J. (2006). Gradiency in syntactic garden-paths revealed by continuous motor output. Paper presented at the 12th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Farmer, T. A., Cargill, S. A., Hindy, N., Dale, R. A., Spivey, M. (2006). Mouse-tracking the visual world: Streaming x,y coordinates imply continuous interaction during syntactic ambiguity resolution. Poster presented the 19th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, New York, NY.
Cargill, S. A., Farmer, T. A., Schwade, J., Goldstein, M., & Spivey, M. (2006). Mouse-tracking the visual world can illuminate syntactic processing in young to very young children. Poster presented at the On-line Methods in Children's Language Processing, New York, NY.
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Kemtes, K. A. (2005). Experience provides sound advice: Individual differences in experience explain differential cue-use in language
comprehension. Paper presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, ON.
Onnis, L., Farmer, T. A., Baroni, M., Spivey, M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2005). Native speakers capitalize on semantic valence tendencies to boost fluent comprehension:
Experimental and computational evidence. Poster presented at the 11th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Gent, Belgium.
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Kemtes, K. A. (2005). The EX factor: Evidence for experience driven comprehenssion. Poster presented at the 11th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Gent, Belgium. [Download] Farmer, T. A., Kemtes, K. A., & Christiansen, M. H. (2005). Sensitivity comes from age and experience: Age and span effects on the ability to utilize contextual information.
Poster presented the 18th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tuscon, Az. [Download] Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Monaghan, P. (2005). Experience provides sound advice: Individual differences in the effect of phonological typicality on sentence processing.
Poster presented the 18th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tuscon, Az.
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & West, R. F. (2005). The "EX" Factor: The nature of individual differences in sentence processing.
Poster presented the 18th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tuscon, Az.
Onnis, L., & Farmer, T. A. (2005). Cause for optimism or cause for pessimism? Processing valence tendencies in online sentence comprehension.
Poster presented the 18th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Tuscon, Az.
Kemtes, K. A., Farmer, T. A., & Christiansen, M. H. (2004). Discourse context helps young and
older readers avoid the garden path. Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Minneapolis, MN.
Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Monaghan, P. (2004). Sound advice in language
comprehension: The influence of phonological typicality on on-line sentence processing. Paper presented at the 10th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Provence, France.
Noll, N. E., Richardson, J., Farmer, T. A., Lunsford, M. A., Ashcraft, B., Langston, E., et al.
(2004). Change deafness for conversation partners: Memory or event perception. Poster presented at the meeting of the Virginia Psychological Association, Richmond, VA.
Farmer, T. A. (2004, March). Cognitive constraints also matter. Poster presented at the fifth
conference on Language Evolution, Leipzig, Germany. [Download] Farmer, T. A., Christiansen, M. H., & Monhagan, P. (2004, March). Phonological typicality
affects on-line sentence processing. Poster presented at the 17th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, College Park, MD.
Farmer, T. A., Lunsford, M. A., Rogers, S. J., Tobia, M., Daube, J., & West, R. F. (2003).
Change deafness rates and working memory span. Poster session presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Vancouver, BC.
Farmer, T. A., & Kemtes, K. (2002). Context interacts with working memory capacity in
the resolution of syntactically ambiguous sentences. Paper presented at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, MA.