About the Lab

The Language Processing Laboratory investigates language use. Our overarching goal is to deepen our understanding of how different types of information (meaning, syntax and form) are represented and processed in the brain so that speakers and listeners can use them effectively and effortlessly.

Within this broad framework, our research centres around developing models of how speakers represent meaning; how syntactic information is represented in the brain; how the retrieval of meaning, syntax and form is co-ordinated in time during production. These research themes are addressed using an approach that is cross-linguistic (encompassing both spoken and signed languages); cross-populations (i.e., investigating both language impaired and unimpaired individuals) and interdisciplinary (i.e., using tools from experimental psychology, neuroscience and computational neuroscience).

Currently, work from the lab includes two major research projects:

• Language Processing in British Sign Language (as part of the activities of the newly established Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre).
• The representation of abstract words (ABSTRACT), a multi-site project funded by the EU.