(formerly Catherine Harris; I married Edmond Caldwell May 2005)
Associate Professor of Psychology Office: Rm 123 Phone: (617) 353-2956 Lab: Rms 127-129 Information about Research Internship (see also Lab page) Curriculum vitae (cv with links to publications, html) |
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Semester |
Number |
Title |
Course Overview |
| Fall 2009 | PS 125 | Freshman Honors Seminar: Revolutions in Conceptualizing the Mind: 1950s to the Present. Tues, Thurs 5-6:30 |
Syllabus (doc) |
| Fall 2009 | PS 824 | Cognitive Psychology (Graduate level), Tues 1-3 | See my prior courses on cognitive science |
| Spring 2010 | PS 241 | Developmental Psychology MWF 1-3 | courseinfo.bu.edu general overview |
| Spring 2009 | PS 560 | Cross-Cultural Psychology | Syllabus (pdf) |
I was trained at UC San Diego, 1985-1991, where I learned from Elizabeth Bates, Jeff Elman, David Rumelhart, Rama Ramachandran, Ronald Langacker, Patricia Churchland and (via CMU) Brian MacWhinney and Jay McClelland (and of course many other wonderful teachers and scholars). I have been a faculty member at BU since 1991.
My research interests are broad, encompassing diverse aspects of language processing, including second language acquisition, emotional aspects of language, and word recognition. I am the first researcher to document that emotion words elicit larger skin conductance responses in a first language than in a second (see paper in Applied Psycholinguistics, pdf). I am currently studying emotional reactivity in the U.S. for speakers who grew up speaking Russian, Mandarin, or Spanish, as well as English native speakers who learned Russian as a foreign langauge (see powerpoint presentation for overview of this research and forthcoming paper on lying in native vs. foreign language). See also a recent powerpoint which discusses the role of motivation in second language acquisition. I am also interested in how units larger than single words are important for fluency and efficiency in all types of language processing (for both first and second language).
In word recognition, I have expertise in an intriguing visual/cognition illusion called repetition blindness. I have shown how illusory words can be created by embedding word fragments in the visual stream, as in "pain grain avy" (leads to report of "gravy" (see, for example, my paper with Alison Morris, in pdf). I have used repetition blindness and the same/difference task to investigate how diacritic letters are represented in Turkish. With German colleagues Martin Heil and Michael Niedeggen I have used this technique to explore consciousness (see our paper in Neuroreport). We conclude that what viewers perceive is more important for subsequent brain states and processing than what is actually in the visual input. A new model of repetition blindness and orthographic priming appeared in 2009 in the journal Cognitive Psychology.
In my cross-cultural research, I am the originator (with Ayse Aycicegi) of the Personality-Culture Clash hypothesis. We propose that mental health is facilitated by having a personality in tune with cultural values.
Event |
Location |
Date |
Topic |
Co-authors |
| Invited colloquium, Bangor University | Wales |
March 7, 2008 |
The difficulty of acquiring a second language in adulthood: Is emotionally-mediated learning the missing ingredient? |
|
| Invited colloquium, Autism Research Center | University of Cambridge |
March 13, 2008 |
Born on the wrong planet? Using forum postings to test hypotheses about special interests and religious beliefs of autistic spectrum young adults (abstract) |
Caitlin Murphy, Choe Jordan |
| Cognitive and Neural Systems | Boston |
May 26-29, 2008 |
3 papers: Non-native speech perception in noise; Lying and emotion in a non-natve language; Processing simplified and tradition Chinese scripts |
With Ayse Aycicegi-Dinn; Hui-wen Cheng |
| Istanbul University | Istanbul |
August 2009 |
To be determined |
Ayse Aycicegi-Dinn |
| BU Child Language Development (pending) | Boston |
Nov 6-8, 2009 |
When Meaning Is Accessed Before Pronunciation: Frequent Semantic Substitution Errors In Chinese Readers |
Hui-wen Cheng |
| Psychonomics Society Meeting | Boston |
Nov 19-2, 2009 |
Breaking the language barrier: Social interactivity improves adult language learning |
Tong, Dahlen, Stone, Chu |
| TESOL (pending) | Boston |
March 24-27 2010 |
Promoting Teaching Methods and Materials for ASL-English Education |
Snodden, Hoffmeister, Kuntze... |
| TESOL (pending) | Boston |
March 24-27 2010 |
Social Interactivity in Virtual Settings for Adult Language Learning |
Jimmy Tong |
| Cognitive Neuroscience Society (in preparation) | Montreal |
April 2010 |
Autism |
Chloe Jordan, Caitlin Murphy |
Why so slow? Video of Virginia Valian's lecture at MIT