Kathleen Pirog Revill

My research focuses on how listeners understand spoken language – a process that normal adults perform with exceptional skill despite the rapid pace at which words in fluent speech are presented. Using eyetracking, I examine how context (your knowledge of the world around you or the words you have already heard) affects the time course of spoken word recognition. I also use fMRI to measure the activation of brain-based semantic representations in response to transiently ambiguous speech input. By combining these different perspectives and methodologies, I hope to better understand how spoken word recognition and word meaning interact with each other. Currently, I am expanding my research by exploring whether context and lexical competitors may differently affect spoken word recognition in healthy older adults.

• Revill, K. P., Aslin, R. N., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Bavelier, D. (2008). Temporary lexical ambiguity activates human MT/V5 for motion-defined words. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 13111-13115.
• Revill, K. P., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Aslin, R. N. (2008). Context and spoken word recognition in a novel lexicon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 1207-1223.