Spontaneous Communication Laboratory

We study the production and comprehension of fillers, hedges, discourse markers, quotation devices, prosody, and gestures across a variety of communicative settings. The settings include face to face communication, virtual communication (audiovisual internet chat), cell phone communication, vicarious learning (where students listen in on others’ communication), and spontaneous written communication. We also study bilingual communication and the gestural expression of intelligent virtual agents. The methods we use in the lab include corpora analyses, reaction time experiments, referential communication tasks, questionnaires, and analyses of speech produced under controlled conditions.