Welcome to the ERC-funded project BraveNewWord

At BraveNewWord, our psycholinguistic lab is dedicated to investigating how adult speakers process novel words, integrating insights from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, and neuroscience. Our interdisciplinary approach allows us to delve deeply into the semantic aspects of language acquisition and understanding.

Using computational models, we simulate how humans learn new words, analyzing natural language usage. These models guide our empirical investigations, which include behavioral experiments and advanced neuroscience methods like EEG to observe brain activity during language processing.

Our studies have revealed fascinating insights. For instance, we’ve found that people use implicit associations and sub-lexical cues stored in their memory to infer the meanings of pseudowords. This shows our brains’ ability to extract meaningful information from unfamiliar input. We’ve also explored the Mental Time Line (MTL), finding that even subtle cues like verb endings can activate this spatial-temporal mapping, influencing how we process temporal information in language. Additionally, our research on morphological cues in affixed pseudowords highlights how recognizing semantic information from morphemes enhances our ability to derive meaning from new terms.

At BraveNewWord, we are dedicated to understanding how language shapes our thoughts and experiences. Our interdisciplinary research is paving the way for deeper insights into the cognitive and neural processes involved in learning new words. Join us in this exciting exploration.