Dr S. Bögels (Sara)

My research focuses on interactive language use and the factors that affect and are affected by it. Currently I am working on a project within the Language in Interaction consortium on 'Creating a shared cognitive space'. In this large-scale interdisciplinary project, we investigate using fMRI whether and how interlocutors can change each other's mental representations and how their brains 'become more similar' after a conversation.

Before, I was part of the Interactional Foundations of Language project in which I investigated turn-taking and speech acts in an interactive setting, using EEG and behavioral methods. One project investigated neural signatures of processes involved in turn-taking, within interactive EEG quiz-paradigms. Another project investigated the role of prosodic factors in turn-taking. A third EEG project was about the meaning of pauses (and their length) before responses to questions.

During my PhD I studied how different prosodic devices (prosodic breaks and pitch accents) play a role in different aspects of language understanding (sentence comprehension, referential communication), using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Following, I received an individual grant from the Dutch NWO (Rubicon), which I used to investigate listeners' use of common ground, employing a novel experimental (MEG) paradigm to investigate this.

• Language and Communication

• Intention and Action