All Outputs (42)

Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making (2024)
Journal Article

This novel experiment investigates the relationship between readers’ eye movements and their use of “noisy channel” inferences when reading implausible sentences, and how this might be affected by cognitive aging. Young (18-26 years) and older (65-87... Read More about Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making.

Introduction to the special issue on new approaches to figurative language research (2024)
Journal Article

The use and interpretation of figurative expressions (e.g., irony, idiom, and metaphor) is an integral part of everyday human communication. Thus, the ability to comprehend figurative language underpins successful communication and social functioning... Read More about Introduction to the special issue on new approaches to figurative language research.

Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture (2024)
Journal Article

Emoji are an important substitute for non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions) in online written communication. So far, however, little is known about individual differences regarding how they are perceived. In the current study, we examined the... Read More about Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture.

The role of social status in sarcasm interpretation: evidence from the United Kingdom and China (2023)
Journal Article

We investigated the effect of culture and social status on sarcasm interpretation. Two hundred U.K. participants and 200 Chinese participants read scenarios in which the final comment could be either literal or sarcastic criticism and the speaker had... Read More about The role of social status in sarcasm interpretation: evidence from the United Kingdom and China.

Individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use: Evidence from the UK and China (2023)
Journal Article

Sarcasm is commonly used in everyday language; however, little is currently known about cultural and individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use, particularly across Western and Eastern cultures. To address these gaps in the literature,... Read More about Individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use: Evidence from the UK and China.

Anaphoric reference to mereological entities (2023)
Journal Article

Corpus evidence suggests that in contexts in which the presence of multiple antecedents might favor plural reference, the disadvantage observed for singular reference may disappear if the potential antecedents are combined in a group-like plural enti... Read More about Anaphoric reference to mereological entities.

Autism, Attachment, and Alexithymia: Investigating Emoji Comprehension (2022)
Journal Article

Emoji are often misinterpreted. This study investigated whether individual differences known to impact facial emotion recognition would also affect emoji recognition. Participants completed an online emoji classification task, and then completed ques... Read More about Autism, Attachment, and Alexithymia: Investigating Emoji Comprehension.

Syntactic prediction during self-paced reading is age invariant (2022)
Journal Article

Controversy exists as to whether, compared to young adults, older adults are more, equally or less likely to make linguistic predictions while reading. While previous studies have examined age effects on the prediction of upcoming words, the predicti... Read More about Syntactic prediction during self-paced reading is age invariant.

Literal vs. hyperbole: examining speech preferences in testimonies of victims of sexual crime (2022)
Journal Article

Victim emotionality is one of the most influential factors in sexual crime cases. Traditionally, the study of emotionality has been limited to behaviour-descriptors such as conveying panic or appearing shaken, however, such studies must also be exten... Read More about Literal vs. hyperbole: examining speech preferences in testimonies of victims of sexual crime.

Do readers maintain word-level uncertainty during reading? A pre-registered replication study (2022)
Journal Article

We present a replication of Levy, Bicknell, Slattery, and Rayner (2009). In this prior study participants read sentences in which a perceptually confusable preposition (at; confusable with as) or non-confusable preposition (toward) was followed by a... Read More about Do readers maintain word-level uncertainty during reading? A pre-registered replication study.

Emoji Identification and Emoji Effects on Sentence Emotionality in ASD-Diagnosed Adults and Neurotypical Controls (2022)
Journal Article

We investigated ASD-diagnosed adults’ and neurotypical (NT) controls’ processing of emoji and emoji influence on the emotionality of otherwise-neutral sentences. Study 1 participants categorised emoji representing the six basic emotions using a fixed... Read More about Emoji Identification and Emoji Effects on Sentence Emotionality in ASD-Diagnosed Adults and Neurotypical Controls.

An eye-tracking study examining the relationship between males’ eating disorder symptomatology, body mass index, and expectations about character behaviour in text (2021)
Journal Article

Eating disorder prevalence is increasing in males, perhaps more rapidly than in females. Theorists have proposed that cognitive biases are important factors underpinning disordered eating, especially those related to food, body, and perfectionism. We... Read More about An eye-tracking study examining the relationship between males’ eating disorder symptomatology, body mass index, and expectations about character behaviour in text.

No evidence of word-level uncertainty in younger and older adults in self-paced reading (2021)
Journal Article

In a self-paced reading study, we investigated whether older adults maintain a greater level of uncertainty about the identity of words in a sentence than younger adults, potentially due to deficits in visuo-perceptual processing of high-spatial freq... Read More about No evidence of word-level uncertainty in younger and older adults in self-paced reading.

Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study (2021)
Journal Article

According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the shortfall between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through... Read More about Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study.

Emoji as a Tool to Aid the Comprehension of Written Sarcasm: Evidence from Younger and Older Adults (2021)
Journal Article

There is evidence for an age-related decline in the ability to understand non-literal language such as sarcasm. There is also evidence to suggest that devices such as emoticons/emojis may influence sarcasm comprehension in younger adults. However, re... Read More about Emoji as a Tool to Aid the Comprehension of Written Sarcasm: Evidence from Younger and Older Adults.

Online representations of non-canonical sentences are more than good-enough (2021)
Journal Article

Proponents of good-enough processing suggest that readers often (mis)interpret certain sentences using fast-and-frugal heuristics, such that for non-canonical sentences (e.g., The dog was bitten by the man) people confuse the thematic roles of the no... Read More about Online representations of non-canonical sentences are more than good-enough.

Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials (2021)
Journal Article

Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humour). Several... Read More about Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

The impact of hyperbole on perception of victim testimony (2021)
Journal Article

This paper investigates how individuals perceive hyperbole in victim statements. Despite being one of the most commonly used literary tropes, the comprehension and cognition of hyperbole has been largely ignored in the psycholinguistics literature, a... Read More about The impact of hyperbole on perception of victim testimony.

What is the relationship between body mass index and eating disorder symptomatology in female fashion models? (2020)
Journal Article

Low body mass index (BMI [less than] 18/18.5) is utilized as a mandated cutoff for professional fashion model employment, based on assumptions that low BMI indicates eating disorder pathology. No previous studies have examined the association between... Read More about What is the relationship between body mass index and eating disorder symptomatology in female fashion models?.

Development and validation of new figural scales for female body dissatisfaction assessment on two dimensions: thin-ideal and muscularity-ideal (2020)
Journal Article

Background: Body dissatisfaction influences women’s mental and physical health. To date, most research has focused on body dissatisfaction in relation to the ‘thin-ideal’. Thus, the association between body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoma... Read More about Development and validation of new figural scales for female body dissatisfaction assessment on two dimensions: thin-ideal and muscularity-ideal.