News

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Sasha is a recent graduate of New York University (BA '19) where he studied Language and Mind and worked at the NYU Child Language Lab where he researched child semantic acquisition, specifically the acquisition of modals. He is interested in the intersections of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology and prefers child language research because of the way it illuminates the fundamentals of language and because the work is livelier too. In his free time Sasha likes to do ballroom and latin dance and watch old movies.

Saying goodbye to Angela!

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Our former lab manager Angela Xiaoxue He has now left for a research faculty position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Read on to learn about some of her accomplishments while she was a postdoctoral scholar in the lab! She gave a number of talks, for example, at the Boston University Conference on Language Development in November 2018, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in March 2019, at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in April 2019; and, presenting co-authored research with Alexis, she presented “Gleebest of the blicks are doing a gorp!—Inferring word meanings from syntax” at SemBabble at the University of California, San Diego in May 2019. Finally, she also presented her research at Elsi Kaiser’s Psycholinguistics Lab here at USC, with a talk entitled “Parse to learn while learning to parse: Verb learning and language processing in 3-year-olds”. In addition to releasing a new publication, “Prosody and function words cue the acquisition of word meanings in 18-month-old infants” (Psychological Science; https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618814131), she had one of the top 20 most downloaded papers in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (CogSci) with her paper entitled “Word Learning Mechanisms”. We are so proud of all of Angela’s accomplishments, and we can’t wait to see how her career develops from here!

A big welcome to our new research assistants!

Sunday, September 30, 2018

The Meaning Lab is excited to welcome our three new research assistants, Shawn Kim, Prim Phoolsombat, and Adeline Wang! They are all sophomores at USC. Shawn studies Philosophy, Politics, and Law with a minor in Forensics and Criminality. Prim is majoring in Computational Linguistics. Adeline is pursuing a double major in Linguistic and Cinema & Media Studies. They're excited to learn more about the science of language, and will be involved in multiple projects already going on in the lab, and will help brainstorm new projects to pursue. Bringing different perspectives, talents, and skillsets, they will contribute greatly to the diversity and vitality of our lab. A big welcome to Shawn, Prim, and Adeline!

Lab's first party!

Friday, August 17, 2018

After a busy year of building the lab (literally–even the walls are new!), the Meaning Lab celebrated with its first ever semester wrap party! Lab members celebrated the winding down of summer and the approach of the new academic year with pizza and a collaborative game of Concepts. This game involves combining pictures that represent different sorts of ideas so that your team mates can guess which concept you have in mind. We couldn't think of a more appropriate game for our lab! Looking forward to a busy year, we look forward to marking new milestones as our team grows.

Welcome to Angela Xiaoxue He!

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

The Meaning Lab is very excited about the arrival of our new postdoctoral researcher, Angela Xiaoxue He! Angela received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Maryland in 2015, and her research focuses on how children learn the meanings of words and sentences. In particular, her research emphasizes how children integrate what they've already learned into what they're currently trying to learn. In addition to making sure the lab’s day-to-day operations run smoothly, she is heading up a couple of the major research projects active in the lab, investigating the interface between language and concepts. A very warm welcome to Angela!

Welcome to the Meaning Lab!

Saturday, July 21, 2018

The Meaning Lab (ML) at University of Southern California is live! ML is a hub for interdisciplinary research focused primarily on the nature of human language and thought. As part of USC's School of Philosophy, we leverage scientific methods drawn from linguistics and cognitive psychology towards addressing the big questions in the philosophy of language and mind. The Meaning Lab was built on the foundation established by the Principal Investigator, Professor Alexis Wellwood, in her construction of the ChiLDlab at Northwestern University. You cans still learn about the people, research, and news from ChiLDlab across the ML website. But along with the move to Southern California, and the change in name, comes a broader vision: in addition to investigating what adults know about language, and how children come to acquire that knowledge, ML studies the relationship between words and concepts, and between language and thought.

ChiLDlab is moving!

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

This August, the ChiLDlab will be moving to a new home at the University of Southern California, where our Principal Investigator, Alexis Wellwood, is joining the faculty. As such, we will no longer be running studies in Evanston, but we are excited to tell you about other opportunities to take part in research at Northwestern. The Child Studies Group registry, a collaboration between us and a select group of Northwestern University child development labs, will enable you and your children to hear about more study opportunities on campus. You can find out more, and sign up, click here to go to the Child Studies Group website.

For those families that have visited us, it has been an absolute pleasure having you in our lab and getting to know you! Besides providing valuable information for our research on language, having families like you in the lab is what made our work so fun and rewarding :)

Haley giving a talk at LSA 2017!

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Haley will present collaborative research with Alexis at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in early January. This research increases our understanding of how speakers integrate linguistic and visual information when evaluating dynamic scenes. In particular, it suggests that adults have highly detailed implicit knowledge of how quantifier words like more work, and it attempts to shed light on the nature of that knowledge. Currently, Haley is designing a follow-up study in a Cognitive Science fellowship directed by Alexis and Steve Franconeri of Northwestern's Visual Thinking lab. This project will investigate the finer-grained distinctions made in visual perception that she can recruit for further studies of the language-cognition interface.

Daniel's research presented at AMLaP 2016!

Friday, September 2, 2016

Daniel's research with Alexis and a collaborator at the University of Cologne, Barbara Tomaszewicz, was presented at this year's Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing in Bilbao, Spain. Daniel's project investigates how people understand sentences with 'implicit negation' like you find in the marked adjective of an antonymic pair like tall/short. This research recalls earlier findings from cognitive psychology that negative words take longer to process than positive words, but extends it in interesting ways. The poster reports results from both English and Polish, establishing the crosslinguistic validity of the effect, as well as results from eye-tracking. This research will help us better understand the relationship between linguistic structure and non-linguistic cognition.

Haley presents her research at CogSci 2016!

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Haley reported on her joint work with Alexis at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Philadelphia. This work investigates how people recruit visual information when they understand simple verbal comparatives like Ann jumped more than Bill did. In her poster, Haley described the results of two experiments investigating how vision is recruited while watching dynamic displays as a function of the choice of verb–move or jump–when the dimension of comparison is underspecified. That is, with higher, longer, or more times, it should be clear what the dimension is–height, duration, or number–but with just move more or jump more, the dimension seems like it might depend on the verb. Haley indeed found a difference between the verbs when the word more was used, but no difference with the other comparative words!

ChiLDlab celebrates the end of its first academic year!

Monday, June 13, 2016

The Child Language Development Laboratory, affectionately known as the ChiLDlab, is celebrating the end of its first academic year! Last week we held a potluck party at Alexis' house to celebrate our accomplishments since September 2015. And what a year it has been! In just 9 short months, the lab was transformed from an idea and a couple of desktop computers into a bustling research hub for undergraduates, graduates, and faculty. This transformation was due in no small part to the creativity and dedication displayed by our lab's manager, Casey Colby, who will be moving into an expanded role next year that includes an emphasis on software development. Under her leadership, our team was able to design and implement multiple research studies belonging to no less than 7 distinct projects, welcome more than 300 children and undergraduate students to participate in those studies, publish an academic paper, and submit 3 further papers for publication. This summer we will relax the pace a little bit, taking some time to assess where we're at, and plan for an even better second year!

Rebecca wins the Linguistic Department's Demoz Prize!

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Rebecca has won the Northwestern Linguistic Department's Demoz prize, awarded in honor of the late professor Abraham Demoz (read about him here). Today, the prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the research and academic environment of linguistics at Northwestern by an undergraduate student. Rebecca certainly deserves it: since becoming a linguistics major only in 2015, Rebecca has presented original research in a graduate-level linguistics conference (the Semantics Workshop of the American Midwest and Prairies), and provided invaluable assistance in making the ChiLDlab a success. The award ceremony will take place tomorrow along with lunch in the Linguistics House classroom. All congratulations to Rebecca!

Rebecca wins Northwestern's SEOTY award!

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Rebecca Way has been working in the ChiLDlab since Fall 2015, and since then, has done an extraordinary amount of innovative work designing research materials, running research studies, and being generally and all-around awesome lab member. Today, Rebecca was awarded the Northwestern On-Campus Student Employee of the Year Award (SEOTY) in recognition of their accomplishments. Join us in congratulating our award-winning research assistant!

Lab mugs!

Friday, March 4, 2016

The fantastic designs of Yuko Nakatani (who also draws pictures to be used in research studies) have appeared on mugs! In blue, the ChiLDlab logo, and in red, an earlier prototype of the ChiLDlab logo, back by popular demand (that is: Haley)! Casey incorporated Yuko's drawings into the two design schemes. So far, we have only ordered a limited run for distributing to lab members. Everyone is pretty excited to have both their coffee and their ChiLDlab too!

Welcome to Zoe Brockman!

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

ChiLDlab is excited to welcome our newest research assistant, Zoe Brockman. Zoe is a recent graduate of Northwestern's Creative Writing program. She is interested both in the fascinating ways that language can be used to make meaning, as well as how children acquire this ability. This quarter, she will be helping to run studies involving how children and adults understand words like most, more, tallest, and shorter. A big welcome to Zoe!

Lab holiday party!

Thursday, December 3, 2015

The lab will have a pot-luck holiday party this Friday, December 4th, at 4pm in Cresap 102-103. There is much to celebrate at the end of our very first quarter as a fully-functioning lab: in just 3 short months, the lab went from a 2-member team consisting of just Alexis and Casey, to a bustling team of 7! We designed and began running our first studies with both children and adults, and the results are coming in quickly. We are investigating how people understand expressions like more and most, tall and less tall, and how they think about simple kinds of events like jumping. We also celebrate Rita's accomplishments this quarter, as we wish her well on her study-abroad trip to Denmark!

Lab members at SWAMP!

Friday, October 9, 2015

Rebecca and Nayoun will be representing Northwestern this year at the Semantics Workshop of the American Midwest and Prairies (SWAMP). Rebecca's project (co-authored with Alexis) investigates the ambiguous meanings of sentences like This airplane is flying less high than any plane can fly, and Nayoun's project (co-authored with Masaya Yoshida, and Alexis) investigates the grammatical properties of questions with why in English. Congratulations, gals, and best of luck at the conference!

Rita to Denmark!

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Rita will be participating in a program called the Danish Institute for Study Abroad from January-May of 2016, where she will be taking a Danish Language and Culture class, as well as Sociology classes. She is especially excited about a Sociology class called "Learning in Scandinavian Classrooms," since the education system in Scandinavia is very different from that in the US. She will also take an Urban Studies/Sociology course, which includes a weeklong trip to Budapest and Vienna. Only her second time out of the country, she is also hoping to travel to a few other countries after the Danish semester is finished!

New graduate students!

Monday, October 5, 2015