NeuroTalk Salon#17：Language processing at multiple timescales

This talk focuses on language processing in both naturalistic and experimental settings, from a longer narrative to a shorter two-word timescale. The first part of the talk examines referential processing, a phenomenon that highlights long-distance dependency in language processing. Five computational models of pronoun processing were compared against fMRI BOLD signals while both English and Chinese participants listened to a story. The results support a memory-based model that incorporates frequency and recency effects during pronoun resolution. In the second part of the talk, I used controlled experiments to understand a single mental operation–meaning composition. I show a functional dissociation within the left temporal lobe for compositional and distributional semantic processing.

Dr. Jixing Li is currently a postdoc at the Neuroscience of Language Lab (NeLLab) at New York University Abu Dhabi. She will be joining the Department of Linguistics and Translation and the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at City University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor in August 2022. Jixing received her PhD in Linguistics from Cornell University in 2019. Her research aims to connect linguistic representations and computations with human neurobiology. She applies advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to test competing psycholinguistic theories against brain data. She has expertise in various neuroimaging techniques, including fMRI, MEG, and EEG, and she integrates theoretical and analytical insights from linguistics, natural language processing (NLP) and cognitive neuroscience in her work.