Prof. Aya Meltzer-Asscher
Research work
Understanding language is an extremely complex task, yet we routinely understand new, often complex sentences, and do it accurately, effortlessly and quickly. In the Sentence Processing Lab, we study the processes underlying language comprehension in real time. We use behavioral measures as well as electrophysiology to unravel how humans understand sentences, millisecond by millisecond. We investigate the ways in which linguistic knowledge and other types of information affect processing, as well as how language processing interacts with working memory mechanisms and executive function.
Areas of interest & scientific knowledge
Cognitive Neuroscience
Selected Publications
- Maayan Keshev & Aya Meltzer-Asscher (2020). The effects of syntactic pressures and pragmatic considerations on predictive dependency formation. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35, 256-272. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23273798.2019.1650946
- Tal Ness & Aya Meltzer-Asscher (2018). Predictive pre-updating and working memory capacity: Evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30, 1916-1938. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/jocn_a_01322?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubme
- Tal Ness & Aya Meltzer-Asscher (2018). Lexical inhibition due to failed prediction: Behavioral evidence and ERP correlates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 44, 1269-1285. https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2017-57781-001.pdf
- Aya Meltzer-Asscher, Jennifer E. Mack, Elena Barbieri, & Cynthia K. Thompson (2015). How the brain processes different aspects of argument structure complexity: Evidence from fMRI. Brain & Language, 142, 65-75. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X14002016?via%3Dihub
- Maayan Keshev & Aya Meltzer-Asscher (2017). Active gap filling in islands: How grammatical resumption affects online sentence processing. Language, 93, 249-268. https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/04_93.3Keshev.pdf
