Professor Ferreira uses basic insights from formal linguistics, especially theories in sentence phonology and syntax, to develop models of processing. Her empirical work relies both on behavioral and neural measures, including eyetracking (for measurement of fixations, saccades and pupil diameter) and the recording of event-related potentials (ERPs). The fundamental aim of her research is to uncover the mechanisms that enable humans to understand and generate language in real time and in cooperation with other cognitive systems.

Current Lab Members

Gwendolyn studies language processing and vision-language interactions. She is interested in how people process and produce spoken sentences in real-time. Her recent work investigates the complex multi-sentence utterances that speakers produce to describe real-world scenes. She is also interested in how people apply their linguistic knowledge to language processing tasks, and whether they are able to learn from recent experience in order to improve processing efficiency.

Yujing is interested in how different components of language interact. Her research interest includes how meaning is expressed via syntactic structure (i.e., the syntax-semantics interface) and how sound interacts with syntax (i.e., the phonology-syntax interface). She is also interested in developing statistical models for data analysis.

I’m a fifth year graduate student working in Fernanda Ferreira’s lab. I completed my B.A. in Psychology at Bard College (NY) with a concentration in Mind, Brain and Behavior. Since entering the Psychology PhD program at UC Davis, I have worked on projects spanning the fields of psycholinguistics and music cognition. In particular, I’m interested in prosody, speech and musical rhythm, neural entrainment, and information structure.

I am a graduate student in the Linguistics PhD. program, working with Professor Ferreira since 2017. I am interested in how functional pressure influences the selection of syntactic structures during language production, and how people communicate with superficial interpretation of linguistic input.

Harvey (Zhuang) Qiu

Graduate Student

Pronouns: he/him

Email: zkqiu@ucdavis.edu

I am a graduate student in the Psychology PhD program, working with Dr. Fernanda Ferreira.

Before coming to UC Davis, I received a BSc in Psychology from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and a BA in Psychology from the University of Queensland, Australia.

I have been working on different research topics including: the processing of formulaic language, the role of neural entrainment in speech comprehension, disfluencies in speech, and the role of event schemas in language comprehension.

I am a fourth year PhD student, working with John Henderson and Fernanda Ferreira. I have a masters degree in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard and I’m an alumna of Mount Holyoke College.

I’m a second year graduate student working in Fernanda Ferreira’s lab. I received my B.A. in psychology and strategic communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My current work investigates the way in which speakers produce multi-sentence utterances when describing complex visual scenes. I am also interested in how disfluencies influence comprehension.

Madison Barker

Graduate Student

Pronouns: she/her

Email: msbarker@ucdavis.edu

I’m a first year graduate student working with Dr. Fernanda Ferreira. Before coming to Davis, I earned my B.A. in Psychology from Cal Poly Pomona in 2020. I have a range of interests, but right now I’m particularly interested in further investigating individual differences in working memory capacity (& other functionalities) and how that may impact syntactic ambiguity resolution and language processing more overall. 

Beverly Cotter

Graduate Student

Pronouns: she/her

Email: btcotter@ucdavis.edu

I am a first year graduate student working with Dr. Emily Morgan. Before coming to Davis, I earned my B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Oregon. My primary research interests lie in the intersection between error-driven learning and linguistic storage, that is, how we store linguistic representations and how this interacts with the way we learn language.

Zach Houghton

Graduate Student

Email: znhoughton@ucdavis.edu

Isaias is a second year, majoring in cognitive science and minoring in psychology. He is a first-generation student from South Gate, CA

Isaias Ceballos III

Research Assistant

Email: iceballos@ucdavis.edu

Casey is a sophomore majoring in cognitive science and minoring in Chinese and religious studies. Academically, Casey is interested in the brain, language, and ethical science. Personally, he is interested in kung fu, cats, and electric guitar!

Casey Felton

Research Assistant

Email: cdfelton@ucdavis.edu

Susannah is a second-year cognitive science and psychology double-major. When she isn’t working in the lab, she loves being out in nature and traveling around to explore new places with her trusty camera. Susannah also loves being at home, mostly baking lots of cookies and bread.

Susannah Rudd
Research Assistant
Email: smrudd@ucdavis.edu

Hello! My name is Prajakta and I am a third year cognitive science and psychology double major. I love studying about the human mind and behaviour and when I am not working in the lab, you can probably find me watching a movie, reading a book or sketching!

Prajakta Nagwekar
Research Assistant
Email: pnagwekar@ucdavis.edu

I am a third-year year majoring in cognitive science. I am interested in studying brain and language processing! When I am not working in the lab, I probably spend time watching various TV shows or dramas, listening to music, or even practicing my Chinese Zither!

Yongying (Ariel) Ye
Research Assistant
Email: myyye@ucdavis.edu

Deeksha Shakya
Research Assistant
Email: dshakya@ucdavis.edu