Language production is a remarkably complex cognitive ability which requires the successful integration of multiple levels of cognitive/neural processing. Research on the mechanisms underlying language production is performed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive neuropsychology, and communication sciences and disorders. However, a complete understanding of language production requires situating our findings in a broader context that addresses the constraints that are placed on theories of language production by general cognitive, neural and computational processing principles. This award provides support for a special workshop session addressing cognitive, computational and neural constraints on theories of language production. The session will be part of the July 2012 meeting of the International Workshop on Language Production at New York University (NYU). The special session will consist of presentations by five leading scientists whose research on cognitive, neural and computational processes can directly constrain theories of language production. Over the past seven years, the International Workshop on Language Production has become the premier meeting focused solely on language production, and is thus the ideal venue to hold a special session of lectures and discussions addressing constraints on language production theories. This special session will inform language production researchers about state-of-the-art findings on the constraints on language production theories, which they can incorporate into their research, and will also provide opportunities to form collaborations between researchers who focus on language production with others who focus on more general cognitive, neural and computational issues.
Language production is a remarkably complex cognitive ability which requires the successful integration of multiple levels of cognitive/neural processing. Research on the mechanisms underlying language production is performed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive neuropsychology, and communication sciences and disorders. However, a complete understanding of language production requires situating our findings in a broader context that addresses the constraints that are placed on theories of language production by general cognitive, neural and computational processing principles. This award provided support for a special workshop session addressing cognitive, computational and neural constraints on theories of language production. The session was part of the July 2012 meeting of the International Workshop on Language Production at New York University (NYU). The special session consisted of presentations by five leading scientists whose research on cognitive, neural and computational processes can directly constrain theories of language production. The lectures led to in-depth discussion of these ideas both formally and informally during the sponsored session. The broader impacts of the special session included helping both established researchers and newer scholars (e.g., Ph.D. students and post doctoral researchers) broaden their approach to investigating the complex system that supports language production. Over the past seven years, the International Workshop on Language Production has become the premier meeting focused solely on language production, and was thus the ideal venue to hold a special session of lectures and discussions addressing constraints on language production theories. This special session informed language production researchers about state-of-the-art findings on the constraints on language production theories, which they can incorporate into their research, and provided opportunities to form collaborations between researchers who focus on language production with others who focus on more general cognitive, neural and computational issues. The presenters at the special session and the other workshop presenters have submitted manuscripts to be published in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal (Language and Cognitive Processes) which will help bring the ideas discussed at the workshop to the larger scientific community.
