About the Sentence Processing Laboratory
Prof. Neal Pearlmutter (and his Sentence Processing Lab) retired from Northeastern in Summer 2022. This version of the lab website contains archived reference material covering the period when the lab was active (1995-2022).
The Sentence Processing Laboratory in Northeastern University’s Psychology Department investigated how people produce and comprehend language, focusing on mental representations and processes related to dealing with sentences. Thus, in language production, we examined how people choose a particular sequence of words to express some particular meaning that they wish to convey. In language comprehension, we examined how people combine the meanings of a sequence of words (like the ones in this sentence) to construct the meaning of an entire sentence.
Topics and issues under investigation included: ambiguity resolution, interactions between memory and language processes, individual differences in language ability, cross-linguistic differences in language processing, functional neuroimaging of language processes, and interactions between detailed knowledge of word meaning and word use in sentences.
The lab was funded at different points by both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIDCD).