Research profile
The question that fascinates me is: “How does language support higher-level cognition?”. The starting point of my research is that language is not only a tool for communication but also plays a crucial role in cognitive processes such as perception and categorization (e.g., Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) but also higher-level cognitive abilities like reasoning (e.g., when using inner speech or in social interaction).
For my PhD I will try to answer the question of how language and pragmatics play a role in higher-level cognition like the formation of abstract concepts. My main hypothesis is that abstract concepts can only be formed with the help of language. How do you know the meaning of, for example, “truth”? Probably you learned it during several communicative interactions. This project makes use of iterative, agent-based computational modeling to answer the research question: “Under which circumstances do more and more abstract concepts evolve?”.
My PhD is supervised by Nicole Gotzner (Psycho-/Neurolinguistics) and Elia Bruni (Computational Linguistics). I’m very happy to be part of the Research Training Group Computational Cognition.
News
- 13.08.24 - My colleague Charlotte Uhlemann and I presented our work at Michael C. Frank’s Language & Cognition group’s lab meeting at Stanford University. Thanks for the feedback!
- 07.08.24 - The second Osnabrück-Irvine workshop on the role of loopholes in polite communication was great fun! There was a very interesting program of talks. Mine was on “Modeling pragmatics in a multi-agent framework”.
- 26.07.24 - I gave an oral presentation at COGSCI 2024. Read the publication, in which we introduce a concept-level reference game, here!
- 21.06.24 - Abstract accepted at XPRAG Italy - see you in Venice in September! :)
- 22.05.24 - I presented my poster at LREC-COLING 2024. Here’s the link to the full-paper publication: Context Shapes Emergent Communication about Concepts at Different Levels of Abstraction.