sure it works in practice,
but does it work in theory?

 

Ariel Goldberg

Graduate Student
Department of Cognitive Science
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218

office: 155 Krieger Hall
phone: (410) 516-5124
email: goldberg::at::cogsci.jhu.edu

INTERESTS

I am interested broadly in the processes and representations involved in producing and comprehending language. This spans both the spoken and written domains, and includes spelling, reading, listening and speaking. My work draws upon the areas of cognitive neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, computational modeling and theoretical linguistics.

More generally, I'm interested in the philosophical concerns of both Cognitive Science and science in general. The process of theory building, the status of various kinds of evidence, the competence/performance paradigm, and the role of simulation are all of particular interest to me.


RESEARCH



2nd qualifying paper: Using space for language: Spatial indices and thematic role assignment
      Under the supervision of Barbara Landau, I investigated the possibility that visual-spatial information is utilized during spoken comprehension to aid the process of thematic role binding. Spatial information is utilized in many sign languages to bind pronouns to referents in the world. Utilizing eye tracking, we investigated whether individuals, when hearing a sentence describing an event, are capable of making use of object locations to aid in binding thematic roles to their referents. This work bears on the relationship between language and space and on the modularity of the language faculty.

1st qualifying paper: Chains and dependencies: Investigating the serial order mechanism of spelling
     Under the supervision of Brenda Rapp I investigated the serial order mechanism of spelling, that is, the process involved in producing each letter, one at a time, in the proper sequence. We evaluated whether chaining theories are an appropriate theory of this process using Simple Recurrent Networks, a class of neural networks that instantiates chaining. We compared the spelling performance of these networks, when damaged, to the performance of brain damaged individuals who have a selective deficit to the serial order mechanism of spelling.


EDUCATION



PUBLICATIONS

  • Goldberg, A.M., Rapp, B. (in press) Is compound chaining the serial order mechanism of spelling? A simple recurrent network investigation. Cognitive Neuropsychology.

  • Landau, B., Dessalegn, B., Goldberg, A.M. (in press) Language and Space: Momentary Interactions. To appear in P. Chilton and V. Evans (Eds.), Language, cognition and space: The state of the art and new directions. Advances in Cognitive Linguistics Series (Ed, V. Evans, B. Bergen, J. Zinken). London: Equinox Publishing.


CONFERENCE TALKS and POSTERS

  • Goldberg, A.M., Cholin, J., Bertz, J.W., Rapp, B., Miozzo, M. (2007) Evidence for morpho-phonological processes in spoken production. Talk presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia Society, Washington, DC. [pdf]

  • Cholin, J., Goldberg, A.M., Rapp, B., Miozzo, M. (2007) The nature of the processing distinction between regular and irregular verbs: Evidence from an English-German bilingual aphasic speaker. Poster presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia Society, Washington, DC.

  • Goldberg, A.M., Burzio, L., Miozzo, M., Rapp, B. (2007) Phonological irregularity in Level 2 morphology is the result of active grammatical processes: Evidence from aphasia. Poster presented at the 4th Hopkins Workshop on Language, Baltimore, MD. [pdf]

  • Goldberg, A.M., Cholin, J., Bertz, J.W., Rapp, B., Miozzo, M. (2007) Morpho-phonological processes in spoken production: Evidence from aphasia. Poster presented at the 4th International Workshop on Language Production, Münster, Germany. [pdf]

  • Goldberg, A.M., Landau, B. (2006) Using space for language: Deictic pointers and thematic role assignment. Poster presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, Canada.

  • Goldberg, A.M., Buchwald, A., Rapp, B. (2005) A challenge to chaining theories of serial order: An SRN investigation. Talk presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, Canada. [pdf]

  • Goldberg, A.M., Rapp, B. (2005) Investigating the serial order mechanism of spelling: A simple recurrent network simulation of the graphemic buffer. Talk presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia Society, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • Goldberg, A.M., Buchwald, A., Kochaniak, J., Rapp, B. (2005) Investigating Serial Order and Graphemic Representations in Spelling: A Simple Recurrent Network Simulation. Poster presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Stresa, Italy. [pdf]

  • Goldberg, A., Clark, R., Grossman, M. (2003) Automatic Comprehension of First-Order and Higher-Order Quantifiers. Poster presented at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, NY.

  • Moneta, L., Clark, R., Goldberg, A., McMillan, C., Grossman, M. (2003) Working memory's influence on syllogistic reasoning. Poster presented at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, NY.

  • Garrett, K.D. Lee, C., McMillan, C., Goldberg, A., Chute, D.L., Liberman, M., Grossman, M. (2002) Comprehension of emotional prosody in Parkinson's disease. Talk presented at the International Neuropsychological Society Meeting, Toronto, Canada.



INVITED TALKS

  • "Integrating connectionist and neuropsychological evidence" Cognitive Neurology Colloquium, Johns Hopkins Hospital



AWARDS

2005: Best student paper, 43rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia



TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS

050.203 Exploring the Living Brain (Brenda Rapp) Spring 2007

050.102 Language and Mind (Bill Badecker) Fall 2006

050.311 Written Language (Brenda Rapp) Spring 2006

050.105 Introduction to Cognitive Neuropsychology (Michael McCloskey) Fall 2005

050.101 Cognition (Bob Frank) Spring 2005

050.105 Introduction to Cognitive Neuropsychology (Michael McCloskey) Fall 2004

050.203 Exploring the Living Brain (Brenda Rapp) Spring 2004


CONFERENCES ATTENDED