Research in our lab aims at understanding the functional and neural architecture of the language system. We study both normal Chinese speakers and Chinese aphasic patients (difficulty with language) to investigate the ways in which the brain represents and accesses knowledge about a word's meaning, grammatical properties, sound and written form.

We particularly welcome students with backgrounds of psychology, biology, and medicine to join our group, and welcome patients with neurological impairments to participate in our studies. See participation page for details.

Contact information:
Yingdong Building, Rm. 330
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning,
Beijing Normal University
Beijing, 100875, P. R. China
Tel/Fax: +86 10 5880 2911
Email: vivi.sherry@gmail.com

Scientific questions:

Grammatical representation in the brain
Grammar, the rules that allow infinite sentences to be built based on a finite set of words, is an essential component of languages. How are grammatical properties of words of various classes captured by the cognitive/neural system? How does the brain “compute” the agreements (e.g., case, tense, grammatical gender) between words so that grammatical sentences are produced to convey a message? How do the language-specific linguistic factors affect the cognitive processes? We attempt to tackle these issues by studying 1) brain-damaged individuals who show varied types of noun/verb dissociations in their deficit patterns 2) how normal speakers process nominal/verbal agreements in production. In particular, we try to understand how the contrast between Chinese language and Indo-European languages might give us special insights into the issue.

Writing and Reading
Chinese characters are complex things. Reading and writing them involve analyses and production of strokes in complicated ways. What guides the reading and writing of these structures and how do these structures make contact with word meaning and sound? We investigate various aspects of the reading and writing processes of Chinese characters/words by looking at how the system breaks down due to brain injury in patients with acquired dyslexia (problems with reading) and acquired dysgraphia (problems with writing). Our focus is what we can learn about the universal mechanisms of reading and writing in general from studying unique aspects of Chinese patients.

Approaches:

Cognitive Neuropsychology
By studying Chinese patients with language disorders resulting from brain damage, we can make inferences about the kinds of cognitive representations and processes that constitute the normal language system.

Cognitive Psychology
Studies of unimpaired individuals' performance on language production tasks, using behavioral measures like reaction time, answer fine-grained questions about the structure of representations and the time course of processing.

Special issue

We organized a “Promoting Cognitive Neuropsychology in China” workshop in April, 2006. Some talks were collected and published in a special issue of a Chinese journal “Advances in Psychological Science”, as listed below ：

Advances in Psychological Science:Language disorders and cognitive neuropsychology

舒华。（2008）。脑损伤语言认知障碍研究——认知神经心理学研究途径。心理科学进展，16（1）1-3。pdf

Coltheart.M.（2008）。认知神经心理学简介。心理科学进展，16 (01) 4-9。pdf

Nickels.L.（2008）。认知损伤的评估。心理科学进展，16 (01) 10-13。pdf

Nickels.L.（2008）。认知神经心理学理论研究与失语症治疗的关系。心理科学进展， 16 (01) 14-17。pdf

韩在柱，舒华，毕彦超。（2008）。汉语的认知神经心理学研究。心理科学进展 ，16 (01) 18-25。pdf

刘洁，毕彦超，韩在柱。（2008）。语言书写机制的研究进展：来自失写症的证据。心理科学进展，16 (01) 26-31。pdf