Research seminar: Julia Uddén

Title: Language is not enough for brains in conversation

Language: This seminar is held in English

Julia Uddén is attached to the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University.

Julia’s profile page

Abstract

Being able to communicate face-to-face with another person requires skills that go beyond core language abilities. In dialog comprehension, we routinely make inferences beyond the literal meaning of utterances. For instance, the utterance "it is hot in here" will in some circumstances mean "can you open the window?". This would be an example of a so-called indirect speech act. It is however not known whether communicative skills such as recognizing speech acts, potentially overlap with core language skills or other capacities, such as Theory of Mind (ToM) skills.

I will talk about two studies where I have investigated these questions using brain imaging (fMRI). Participants listened to dialogs, or participated in dialogs themselves, from within the scanner. The latter study allowed us to approach the question of how intentions are formed when producing speech, during actual conversation. Based on the results, I will argue that contextualized and multimodal communication requires neurocognitive networks different from those associated with (1) core language, (2) ToM/complex emotion processing, and (3) so-called cognitive control. If time permits, this conclusion will also be discussed in relation to recent behavioral evidence of adolescent development of different pragmatic skills, that we have obtained.

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Contact

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Anna Sjöberg, PhD student
anna.sjoberg@ling.su.se

Carla Wikse Barrow, PhD student
carla.w.barrow@ling.su.se