In this project, we will expect to collect a pool of real-time behavioral data (by using eye-tracking equipment) to generally support the context-dependency hypothesis in the area of spoken word recognition.

The expected impact of this research project is twofold:

Theoretically, the research findings will clarify the underlying psychological mechanism of spoken word recognition and the cognitive processes of sentence processing from a cross-linguistic perspective. In addition, the experimental results obtained from the eye-tracking equipment will bolster the robustness of the scientific support of either hypothesis on spoken language processing.
Practically, the research findings can form the basis for constructing and developing the computational model to simulate human speech processing; for example, the parameters of spoken word recognition and sentence processing as well as the algorithm of spoken language processing.

Dr. Michael Yip joined the HKIEd in August 2008 as an Associate Professor. Michael is an experimental psycholinguist by graduate training and his recent research interest involves different areas of Cognitive Science. He is working on different collaborative research projects with scholars over the world (Australia, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, UK and US). He also serves on the editorial board of Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. Michael is a Visiting Professor at Tokyo Gakugei University, Japan (since 2011), The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia (2015-2016), and an affiliate member of ARC Centre of Excellence for The Dynamics of Language, Australia (since 2015).

General Research Fund