Rachel Ostrand

I am a cognitive scientist with a focus in psycholinguistics - the study of speech production and comprehension. I am interested in how speech changes as a function of the context, and specifically, how speakers and listeners adapt their language processing to the characteristics of their particular partner. There is adaptation both on the comprehension side - for example, listeners expect to hear higher-frequency (i.e., easier) words from a 2-year-old than from an adult, as well as on the production side - for example, speakers engage in alignment, when they modulate characteristics of their own speech to converge upon those characteristics of their listener's speech.

I also investigate the use of language production to diagnose cognitive diseases and disorders. Language is an extremely rich signal, and is highly variable, and can be a signal of the speaker's underlying cognitive state. Attentional load, distraction, memory - all affect characteristics of people's speech. Speakers and listeners exploit the massive variability of language in order to improve communication. We hope to exploit that variability to diagnose cognitive disorders.

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