Listeners and readers do not always arrive at an interpretation of language input that is consistent with the information that is actually in the input. These misinterpretations are often systematic and predictable. In this talk, Dr. Kiel Christianson will describe Good-Enough Language Processing, a framework that attempts to account for misinterpretations by positing that the human language comprehension system applies “heuristics” to language input in an attempt to quickly and easily extract meaning. At times, these heuristics conflict with the syntactic content of the input. When the language processor opts to prioritize the heuristics over the syntax, misinterpretations arise. He will describe several studies that explore how these misinterpretations arise, and how the language comprehension system (sometimes) works to repair them.

Lunch will be provided.

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Sponsor: Beckman Institute - Beckman Director's Seminar