Thesis Title: An investigation into the role of syllables as planning units in typed language production

I am a second year PhD student interested in examining how typed language production is constrained by phonological processing, how orthographic motor-plans are processed, and how orthographic motor programs are processed into chunks prior to typing.

The research involves the manipulation of letter and N-gram frequencies in letter strings, words, and pseudo-words and measures the response times of key presses to measure the initial onset latencies and latencies between individual key presses. This data provides information of what is planned prior to typing: whether and under what circumstances motor codes are computed in advance, retrieved from a repository of frequently used motor plans, or computed incrementally during output.

My research also investigates how phonological codes are involved in orthographic processing during typing. Phonological processing can often occur prior to or concurrently with orthographic processing. For example, when typing people may often covertly name (say in their head) the intended message prior to typing. I will further examine the extent to which phonology assists in typing production by investigating the extent to which spoken syllable patterns are present in typing.

Director of Studies

Dr Mark Torrance

Research Group / Centres and Projects

Language and Psycholinguistics
Cognition and Perception

Publications

Vernon, M., Torrance, M., & Baguley, T. (2014). N-gram Frequency Effects on Orthographic Processing in Keystroke Production [poster presentation]. In: 31st Cognitive Psychology Section Annual Conference, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, 3-5 September 2014.