Research Report: So you think you can spell?

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“Inocent.”

You just read a word with a spelling error that we see in 39% of occurrences of “innocent” in social media. Recent research from the Reading Lab at McMaster demonstrates that spelling errors are harmful in that they make readers “unlearn” the correct spelling, and do so every time an error is encountered. This detrimental effect of variability in spelling affects all readers, even those whose own spelling habits are impeccable.

In two studies using the state-of-the-art eye-tracking technique and a behavioural lexical decision task, undergraduate student Sadaf Rahmanian and Dr. Victor Kuperman at the McMaster Reading Lab showed that readers took longer to recognize words that were spelled correctly, if those words were more frequently misspelled in unedited sources like social media. Sadaf concludes: “Praise be to spell-checkers, literacy instructors, proof-readers and editors, who keep spelling consistent.” The findings were published in the leading journal on literacy and reading research Scientific Studies of Reading.

For the full paper, click here [http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~vickup/Rahmanian-Kuperman-2017.pdf]

CFP: Frontiers in Communication

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The Words in the World Project has launched a “Research Topic” in Frontiers in Communication Research.

The goal of this Research topic is to bring together the latest insights, findings, methodologies, and analytic techniques that advance the understanding of lexical knowledge and lexical ability, particularly in relation to real-world communication.

Frontiers in Communication is an open access journal that will allow research conducted within the network to have impact in domains that are outside the scope of traditional psycholinguistic publication venues.  The Words in theWorld project has committed to covering the Author Fees for up to a dozen articles submitted by members of the Words in the World project. This support will be available to all collaborators and partners. The Research Topic will be edited by Gary Libben, Gonia Jarema, Juhani Järvikivi, Eva Kehayia, and Victor Kuperman. We invite you to submit an abstract of original research that addresses one or more of the topics below:

  • New perspectives on the nature of lexical representation in the mind and brain
  • New methodologies for the study of lexical processing
  • New corpus resources, statistical techniques, and data visualization tools that can reveal the dynamic interaction of variables involved in lexical processing.
  • Studies of individual differences in lexical processing
  • Studies of language and/or cultural effects in lexical processing
  • Studies of lexical processing across the lifespan
  • Studies of situational effects in lexical processing
  • Reports of application of lexical processing research to the solution of real-world challenges.

We are particularly interested in submissions that are co-authored by established researchers and trainees (e.g., students and/or post-doctoral researchers). Abstracts should be submitted through the Frontiers’ special topic page for Words in the World.

More information can be found here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/6847/words–in–the–world

DEADLINES:

The deadline for Abstract submission is January 31, 2018.
The deadline for article submission is October 31, 2018.

Research Report: It’s not what you say; it’s how you frame it.

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Think of the verb “cause.” Does it make you feel emotional? Most likely, not. Now think of the contexts in which this verb occurs: cause problems, cause damage, cause harm. The framing of ’cause’ is emotionally negative. A recent study by a PhD student Bryor Snefjella and Dr. Victor Kuperman from McMaster Reading Lab, published in a premier psychology journal Cognition, shows for the first time that contexts are as powerful in determining emotionality of an English word, as the word itself.

Says Bryor: “It’s been known that positive and concrete words (e.g., ice-cream or smile) are learned earlier in life, recognized faster in print and retained better in memory. What we show is that word learning, recognition and memory is equally strongly affected by how positive or concrete the contexts are in which a word tends to occur. To have a larger vocabulary, keep your contexts positive!”

Snefjella, B. and Kuperman, V. (2016). It’s all in the delivery: Effects of context valence, arousal, and concreteness on visual word processing. Cognition, 156, 135-146.

Read the preprint here.

New Journal launched by Huettig, Mishra, & Padakannaya (WoW Collaborator)

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Cover image of the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science

Name: Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science

Publisher: Springer

Link: http://www.springer.com/psychology/cognitive+psychology/journal/41809

Words in the World collaborator Dr. Padakannaya (University of Mysore) is pleased to announce the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science and an open call for papers: 

We are delighted to introduce a new journal to the field, the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science. The advent of this journal reflects the fact that cognitive science cannot ignore culture as a crucial factor impacting mental processes and brain functioning. Today, we have an increasing amount of empirical and theoretical work that emphasizes cultural, social, and bodily influences on mind and brain. A focus on the individual and her experiences has become increasingly important. This approach emerged in all fields that have been associated with cognitive science, from neuroscience to philosophy of mind. This journal aims to be a platform to discuss the latest developments and to present the best empirical work shedding light on such issues.

 

We are thrilled to have a team of excellent associate editors, and we thank Giovanni Bennardo, Zohar Eviatar, and Jyotsna Vaid for their service to the journal and the field. We are also grateful to have a team of distinguished anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, and neuroscientists from across the globe to serve on our editorial board.

 

We invite both rigorous research articles, and thought-provoking theoretical articles. Any paper that advances our knowledge of cultural influences on cognition and the brain is most welcome here. We particularly encourage submissions of research with non-WEIRD (Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic) participant populations. It is no secret that the vast majority of research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience has been carried out with Western students. It is vital to look at different cultures and diverse participant populations so that we can understand what kind of findings from this mostly Western research body generalize to the world population. After all, we want to understand the human mind and not just the minds of Western undergraduates. We also especially encourage submissions of work from researchers from all parts the world. There is currently an exciting expansion of cognitive science and neuroscience research worldwide, and the many new labs in China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East are pertinent examples of this. Our journal also attempts to support this development. It is within this changing and diverse landscape that we want the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science to thrive. We look forward to your readership and submission of your best work.

New Master’s degree in Applied Experimental Psychological Sciences

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The Department of Psychology at the University of Milano-Bicocca is offering a new Master’s degree in Applied Experimental Psychological Sciences (AEPS), beginning in 2017-2018. The program’s focus is on the application of the psychological sciences to addressing real world problems, throughout a wide range of contexts and domains. The program offers cutting-edge training on the cognitive, social, emotional, and neural processes underlying human thought, behaviour, language, knowledge, and decision making, and emphasizes the development of methodological research skills.

 

International students are encouraged to apply!

 

For more information,  please see the attached flyer (sample image below), and visit the program’s page here.

High resolution: AEPS flyer Page 1 AEPS flyer Page 2

Low resolution: AEPS flyer (single file)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aphasia Friendly Canada project site is live!

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We are excited to announce that the Aphasia Friendly Canada site is now accessible at http://aphasiafriendlycanada.ca/. This project is spearheaded by Dr. Lori Buchanan at the University of Windsor. It hosts the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign, The Word Exchange, and The Caregiver Exchange.

The Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign offers to educate business owners and employees on aphasia and provides them with personalized training to improve accessibility for individuals with communication disorders.

The Word Exchange is a free adult conversation group hosted in Windsor, Ontario, where people with aphasia can meet with each other for conversation and engage in activities facilitated by trained student volunteers.

The Caregiver Exchange offers support and educational resources for caregivers of individuals with aphasia. Meetings are currently held in Windsor.

 

Call for applications: Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Cognitive Science of Language

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Applications are solicited for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Cognitive Science of Language graduate program at McMaster University and the Department of Applied Linguistics at Brock University. The postdoctoral position is made open under the aegis of the Words in the World SSHRC partnership training grant and will also be supported by NSERC and other Canadian federal and provincial funding sources. The supervision will be conducted jointly by Dr. Victor Kuperman (McMaster) and Dr. Gary Libben (Brock).

The supervisory team is looking for a postdoctoral researcher who can make substantial contributions to one or both of the following research projects:

1. Individual variability in visual and auditory processing of morphologically complex words, and
2. Executive functions, serial fluency, and statistical learning as predictors of efficient reading comprehension.

For details on the position, compensation and application procedure, see the full job posting here.

For personal inquiries about the position please contact Victor Kuperman at vickup@mcmaster.ca.

Words in the World – Happy Holidays

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Dear Colleagues,

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your families a very happy holiday season and all the best for 2017. We hope that the coming year will be one filled with health, happiness and the joy of creativity and discovery.

As we come to the end of this year, we celebrate an exciting beginning to the Words in the World Partnership. The success of our funding application was officially announced in September 2016. It is an honour to be among the eighteen successful applications and to be the only project to be awarded a grant focused on Student and Post-Doctoral Training in the 2016 competition.

The highlight of the fall 2016 season was certainly the 10th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, which was held in Ottawa, Canada from October 19 to 21. The three-day conference featured poster and platform presentations from researchers around the world. It was a conference filled with reports of exciting new findings, methodological developments and perspectives, and the spirit of discovery and collegiality that has come to characterize the conference.

Vanessa Taler and Laura Sabourin were the Local Organizers of the Conference. They and their team were wonderful hosts for this milestone event. The conference was opened by Kevin Kee, Dean of Arts at University of Ottawa, who is a member of the Words in the Word Advisory Board. We were also delighted that Ted Hewitt was able to be our speaker and guest of honour at the Conference Banquet. Dr. Hewitt is President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the agency that has funded the Words in the World Partnership.

The Ottawa conference provided us the opportunity to host events specifically related to the Words in the World Partnership. On October 19, we hosted a Lunch and Learn event for over 50 students and post-doctoral fellows attending the conference. The Lunch and Learn focused on opportunities for students and post-doctoral fellows to combine psycholinguistic research with engagement with industry and with community organizations. The event featured Panel Members Lori Buchanan (Project Co-Investigator and creator of the Aphasia Friendly Business Campaign), Eva Kehayia (Co-Creator and Co-leader of the Living Lab RehabMALL Project), and Vivian Tsang (Scientist with Quillsoft Ltd, a company that develops software products in the education and literacy field and which is a key corporate partner associated with the Words in the World Partnership).

In the evening of October 19, we held a meeting attended by over 30 academic collaborators. It was a meeting in which we mapped out a number of strategies and targets that were important to the development of our Milestone Document that we submitted to SSHRC on October 24, 2016.

Looking forward to 2017

As we have articulated in our Milestone Document, 2017 will be a year in which we expand our scientific activities and in which we develop new cross-site initiatives and training opportunities for students and post-doctoral fellows. We will be in touch with you in 2017 with updates and details on specific initiatives. These will include updates on the following:

  • The set of instructional video modules for specific domains of lexical processing research that we will develop in 2017 and for which we will be seeking contributions from project members.
  • A new set of cross-linguistic and cross-site collaborative projects. The initial set of languages include English, French, German, Dutch, and Hebrew.
  • New synthetic edited books and special journal issues. Planned volumes include a book on “Questions for the next Decade”, a special issue of The Mental Lexicon, and an issue of Frontiers in Communication.

We look forward to developing these and other initiatives as we work together to achieve the overall goal of the Words in the World Partnered Research Training Initiative:  To advance the development of the next generation of research leaders through partnered training and collaborative knowledge creation and mobilization.

 

Happy Holidays!

The Words in the World Canadian Leadership Team