Speaker: Zara Harmon, Ph.D.

Role: Postdoc at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and the Department of Linguistics, and affiliated with the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program. She works with UMD faculty Naomi Feldman and Jan Edwards.

Title: The contribution of top-down and preceding-context cues to language production

Abstract: Language is composed of both familiar and novel combinations. As a result, language production requires balancing automaticity and creativity. The most likely continuation of a given utterance can be produced automatically using preceding context as a cue. In contrast, production of novel sequences requires generalizing forms to new contexts. In this talk, I will argue that generalizing a form to novel contexts is predicted by the strength of top-down cues to that form, and that experiences that increase reliance on top-down cues contribute to generalization. I will then share data from two studies showing that contextual variability decreases reliance on preceding-context cues and increases reliance on top-down cues. This simple mechanism can explain a wide range of patterns from difficulties faced by children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) to patterns of disfluencies in adults’ everyday language use.