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Commcog

In this HCIAS-Research project, communication is studied from a pragmatic perspective. The aim is to observe how different language mechanism interact with contextual factors in discourse. Although different theoretical, descriptive and applied studies are carried out, the predominant methodology of this research project is experimental, since it allows direct or indirect observations of the cognitive processes during communication.

The experimental studies conducted in this research project focus on different textual mechanisms and operations (informative structure of discourse, argumentative structures, multimodal elements, discursive coherence and continuity, etc.), on mechanisms and operations that imply the projection of the speaker in communication (modality) and on mechanisms and operations that involve interpersonal relationships or interactional behavior.

Dpkog

The research group “Discourse Particles and Cognition” investigates from the perspective of experimental pragmatics how discourse particles as procedural elements condition the interpretation of utterances, and thus, communication itself.

 Because of their high sensitivity to contextual factors and their different morphological, syntactic and semantic properties across languages, discourse particles pose a theoretical and descriptive challenge for general and for contrastive pragmatics. Despite the divergences still existing around them, there is remarkable consensus about their basic functional property, which consists in triggering different relations between discourse segments by guiding the contextual enrichment during communication. Since discourse particles constrain access to contexts to obtain the most relevant contextual effects, it can be theoretically assumed that they have an extraordinary communicative value.

These assumptions have been experimentally tested in a series of experiments carried out sofar across different languages (Spanish, English, German, and Italian), with the aim of finding correlations between formal properties of discourse particles and their cognitive processing .

The results of experimental research have already led to formulating a series of cognitive principles of discourse marking, which predict how discourse particles affect utterance processing (Loureda, Cruz, Recio & Rudka 2021).

Eye Tracking Lab

The current eye tracking lab is equipped with a RED 500 eye tracker system from SMI (Sensomotoric Instruments). This remote system can record eye-movements with a sampling rate of max. 500 Hz and an accuracy of 0.4°. Concerning software, the following applications are available: SMI Experiment Suite 360°, SMI BeGaze, SMI Video Analysis Package, SMI Reading Package