The goal of this award period is research/educational enhancement. The investigator will gain expertise and incorporate into her research program the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She will use this expertise in fMRI to further explore the cognitive processes and mechanisms underlying language comprehension, which she has explored using non-imaging techniques and which she has summarized in a framework she calls the Structure Building Framework. According to this framework, the goal of comprehension is to build coherent mental representations or structures. These structures represent clauses, sentences, paragraphs, passages, and other meaningful units. To build these structures, first, comprehenders lay foundations for their mental structures. Then, comprehenders develop their mental structures by mapping on information, when that incoming information coheres or relates to the previous information. However, if the incoming information is less coherent, comprehenders employ a different process. They shift and initiate a new substructure. The investigator's prior behavioral investigations challenge her to explore more concretely the brain structures that enable the cognitive processes involved in structure building. The significance of this pursuit is to answer both the question of `How do the cognitive processes and mechanisms that underlie language comprehension occur in the brain?` as well as the more traditional question of `Where do the cognitive processes and mechanisms that underlie language comprehension occur in the brain?` Within the realm of language processing, fMRI has been used to investigate language processing, but to only a limited extent. Training researchers who are already skilled at conducting behavioral, cognitive-psychological language comprehension research (such as the investigator) to use more complex, neuro-imaging techniques will allow the field to answer more complex questions about the brain activities that occur during language comprehension. This award will support activities designed to promote the development of a scholarly and institutional leader. The research and training experience will increase the investigator's prominence in the science and engineering community and will enhance her professional contribution by providing her with funding opportunities not ordinarily available through regular research funding mechanisms. Such intensive and state-of-the-art retraining should serve to ensure the vitality of the nation's scientific enterprise. Moreover, in this new area of research (functional brain imaging), women are even less well-represented than they are in the investigator's original area of research (cognitive psychology). By providing the resources for this training and research, the Foundation will be increasing the number of women as full participants in this important and highly contemporary area of science.
