holly.branigan@ed.ac.uk Room: F34 Telephone: +44 131 651 3187
My main interests are in language production (especially syntactic processing) in both monolinguals and bilinguals: how do people represent the grammar of their first language or a second language, and how do they choose between alternative syntactic structures? I'm also interested in dialogue, including human-computer interaction, and how factors such as speakers' personality traits and their beliefs about their listeners affect their behaviour. More recently, I've begun to work on language processing in children: do children represent and process language, particularly syntax, in the same way as adults? Another line of research investigates dyslexia, and the factors that underpin fluent reading. I am always happy to hear from prospective PhD students who would be interested in working on any of these (or related) topics.
Publications
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., Pearson, J. & McLean, J.F. (in press). Linguistic alignment between humans and computers. Journal of Pragmatics.
Jones, M.W., Branigan, H.P., & Kelly, M.L. (2009). Dyslexic and non-dyslexic reading fluency: Rapid Automatized Naming and the importance of continuous lists. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16, 567-572.
Jones, M.W., Obregon, N., Kelly, M.L., & Branigan, H.P. (in press). Phonological and extra-phonological influences on a measure of reading fluency: Evidence from dyslexic and unimpaired readers. Cognition, 109, 389-407.
Raffray, C.N., Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (in press). Relation priming, the lexical boost, and alignment in dialogue. Commentary on Leech. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Jones, M.W., Branigan, H.P., & Kelly, M.L. (2008). Visual deficits in developmental dyslexia: Relationships between non-linguistic visual tasks and their contribution to literacy. Dyslexia, 14, 95-115.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J, & Tanaka, M. (2008). Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production. Lingua, 118, 172-189.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J, McLean, J.F., & Cleland, A.A. (2007). Participant role and syntactic alignment in dialogue. Cognition, 104, 163-197.
Raffray, C.N., Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (2007). Priming the interpretation of noun-noun combinations. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 380-395.
Branigan, H.P. (2006). Syntactic priming. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J, & McLean, J.F., & Stewart, A. (2006). The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from syntactic priming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 974-1010.
Watson, M. E., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (2006). An empirical investigation into spatial reference frame taxonomy using dialogue. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, July 2006.
Branigan, H.P. & Hartsuiker, R. (2006). Speech production. Entry for Encyclopaedia of Linguistics. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Pearson, J., Hu, J., Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & Nass, C. (2006). Adaptive language behavior in HCI: how expectations and beliefs about a system affect users' word choice. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, pp.1177-1180. Montréal, April 2006.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & McLean, J.F. (2005). Priming prepositional-phrase attachment during comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 31, 468-481.
Haywood, S., Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (2005). Do speakers avoid ambiguity in dialogue? Psychological Science, 16, 362-366.
Branigan, H.P., McLean, J.F., & Jones, M.W. (2005). A blue cat or a cat that is blue? Evidence for abstract syntax in young children’s noun phrases. In A. Brugos, M. R. Clark-Cotton, & S. Ha (Eds.), The proceedings of the 29th annual Boston University conference on language development, (pp. 109 – 121). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Branigan, H.P. (2004). Full alignment of some but not all representations in dialogue. Commentary on Pickering and Garrod. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 191-192.
Branigan, H.P. & Pickering, M.J. (2004). Syntactic representation in the lemma stratum: Commentary on Levelt, Roelofs and Meyer. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 296-297.
McLean, J. F., Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (2004). Lexical repetition and syntactic priming in dialogue. In J. C. Trueswell & M. K. Tanenhaus (Eds). Processing world-situated language: Bridging the language as product and language as action traditions. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press.
Watson, M. E., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (2004). Alignment of reference frames in dialogue. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Chicago, August 2004.
Liversedge, S.P., Pickering, M.J., Clayes, E.L., & Branigan, H.P. (2003). Thematic processing of adjuncts: Evidence from an eye-tracking experiment. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 10, 667–675.
Branigan, H.P. & McLean, J.F. (2003). Something old, something new: addressee knowledge and the given-new contract. Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Boston, July 2003.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J, Pearson, J., McLean, J.F., & Nass, C.I. (2003). Syntactic alignment between computers and people: the role of belief about mental states. Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Boston, July 2003.
Haywood, S., Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (2003). Co-operation and co-ordination in the production of noun phrases. Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Boston, July 2003.
Pickering, M.J., Branigan, H.P., & McLean, J.F. (2002). Constituent structure is formulated in one stage. Journal of Memory & Language, 46, 586-605.
Plemmenou, E., Bard, E.G., & Branigan, H.P. (2002). Grammatical gender in the production of single words: Some evidence from Greek. Brain and Language, 81, 236-241.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J. & Cleland, A.A. (2000). Syntactic coordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., Stewart, A.J. & McLean, J.F. (2000). Syntactic priming in spoken production: Linguistic and temporal interference. Memory & Cognition, 28, 1297-1302.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J. & Cleland, A.A.. (2000). Syntactic priming in written production: Evidence for rapid decay. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 535-540.
Prat-Sala, M. & Branigan, H.P. (2000). Discourse constraints on syntactic processing in language production: A cross-linguistic study in English & Spanish. Journal of Memory & Language, 42, 168-182.
Pickering, M.J., Branigan, H.P., Cleland, A.A & Stewart, A.J. (2000). Syntactic activation in language production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 205-216.
Branigan, H.P. & M. Prat-Sala (2000). A cross-linguistic perspective on discourse context and syntactic processing in language production. In V. Lombardo & M. de Vincenzi (Eds) Cross-linguistic Perspectives for Language Processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Pickering, M.J. & Branigan, H.P. (1999). Syntactic priming in language production. Trends in Cognitive Science, 3, 136-141.
Branigan, H.P., Lickley, R. & McKelvie, D. (1999). Non-linguistic influences on rates of disfluency in spontaneous speech. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Congress of Phonetic Sciences , San Francisco, August 1-7, 1999.
Branigan, H.P. & Feleki, E. (1999). Conceptual accessibility and serial order in Greek speech production. Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, July 1999.
Sturt, P., Branigan, H.P. & Matsumoto-Sturt, Y. (1999). Thematic domain constraints on reanalysis in Japanese. Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, July 1999.
Pickering, M.J. & Branigan, H.P. (1998). The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic persistence in written language production. Journal of Memory & Language, 39, 633-651.
Liversedge, S.P., Pickering, M.J., Branigan, H.P. & van Gompel, R.J. (1998). Processing arguments and adjuncts in isolation and context: The case of by-phrase ambiguities in passives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 24, 461-475.
Branigan, H.P., Stewart, A.J. & Pickering, M.J. (1998). Is syntactic priming a two-way effect? Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Vogel, C., Hahn, U. & Branigan, H.P. (1996). Cross-serial dependencies are not hard to process. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics. Copenhagen, August 5-9 1996.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., Liversedge, S.P., Stewart, A.J. &.Urbach, T.P. (1995). Syntactic priming: Investigating the mental representation of language. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 24, 489—506.
GRANTS
ESRC
The mental representation of nouns & verbs: Syntactic priming in production. October 1997-September 2000. £99,640. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Prof. M. Pickering.] Graded Outstanding.
Determinants of syntactic coordination in dialogue. July 2001-June 2004. £132,000. (Principal Investigator). Graded Outstanding.
Reading fluency in normally developed and dyslexic reading: How important is parafoveal versus foveal processing? September 2009-August 2010. £99, 000. (Principal Investigator).
Reading fluency in normally developed and dyslexic reading: How important is parafoveal versus foveal processing? September 2009-August 2010. £99, 000. (Principal Investigator).
British Academy
Incremental syntactic production. Postdoctoral Fellowship. October 1997-September 2003. c. £90,000. (Principal Investigator)
Syntactic priming effects in spoken dialogue. August 1998-April 1999. £4,300. (Principal Investigator)
Time-aligned annotation of the unlabelled Map Task Corpus. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Dr R. Lickley]. April 1999-April 2000. £3,800.
Syntactic processing in spoken and written production. March 2002-February 2003. £4,828. (Principal Investigator)
Lexical and semantic effects on reference frame priming. January 2008-December 2010. £1,140. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Dr M. Watson]
Lexical and semantic effects on reference frame priming. January 2008-December 2010. £1,140. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Dr M. Watson]
Nuffield Foundation
Syntactic cooperation and communicative success in dialogue. October 2000-January 2001. £8996. (Principal Investigator)
Scottish Enterprise
Alignment between humans and computers, and its implications. October 2002-September 2005. c.£195,000. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Prof. M. Pickering.]
Understanding and Leveraging Alignment in Human-Technology Interaction. October 2005-August 2007. c.£100,000. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Prof. M. Pickering.]
Leverhulme Trust
Dialogue matters. August 2005-July 2008. c. £150,000. (Co-applicant) [Principal Investigator: Prof. R. Kempson.]
