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June 28, 2008
PhD Thesis
My PhD thesis is now available: it is titled Context Effects in Language Production: Models of Syntactic Priming in Dialogue Corpora.
The basic question I'm answering is: How and why are we influenced by another person's structure as we listen to them? I look at large collections of every-day conversations between people. What happens is that we adapt to our conversational partner as we speak. Interestingly, I find that those adapting more also do better at carrying out a task: adaptation is helpful and necessary. Such adaptation is important because it gives us insight into how the brain processes and produces natural language: only the structural elements that our brain discovers can lead to adaptation. I use computer models to first discover and quantify adaptation in large datasets (with thousands of recorded dialogues between people), and then to simulate what goes on in our brains.
A more scientific abstract is available here.
Posted by dr at 5:49 PM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2008
Travel schedule
Personal Log. Here's my travel schedule for the next few months. If you (friends, colleagues...) would like to meet me while I'm near you, get in touch!
29 June - 1 July: Germany: Han(n)over, Bielefeld, Osnabrück. Talk at University of Bielefeld on the 30th.
1 July - 2 July: London
8 July - 22 July: Pittsburgh, PA. ACT-R summer school, ACT-R workshop at CMU.
23 July - 27 July: Washington D.C., CogSci-2008
early August: Mainz, Berlin, Munich. Moving stuff around.
Posted by dr at 5:53 PM | Comments (0)
June 2, 2008
Full steam
It's been silent on David's World recently. There were good reasons for it. Back in January, the future looked like a bright black hole, and I changed this blog's motto to "the world looks large and looming". Then, I finished and submitted my PhD thesis at the end of March and defended in early May, which was an exciting and stimulating, fun event, last but not least thanks to the great people on my committee.
The future looks brighter now. For those not working in the field of science and academia: As a budding university academic, a newly finished PhD has to apply for funding or research jobs. It is needless to say: the air gets thinner. Creating the options was hard but not impossible (Randy Pausch: "the brick walls are there for you to show how hard you want something"). Weighing one's options once they're there isn't easy either, especially if one has to judge the potential outcomes of proposed and not-so-well-defined work over the next couple of years. Life seems to become less of a game and, still, more and more exciting. And what's most exciting: there's not just a me-me-me, but a Sherice and I who will be moving!
In other news, I won the second prize in this year's Death By Dessert Championships with "EAT ME", a spice cake with a chocolate-orange icing and brandy cream. Chris won this one with a German-style Quark cake, selected by the tough but fair panel of judges. Those cakes had some amazing competition as well.
Posted by dr at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)