Art and The Psychology of Language
Our lab studies how people use language to communicate. We study language by asking people to take part in carefully designed language games. These games help us measure how people make choices in how to express themselves, or how quickly they understand something.
One way we test language is by asking people to talk about pictures. Another way is to measure people’s responses as they look at pictures and listen to stories, or instructions about how to move objects around. Both of these methods require showing images. We collaborate with artists who create our experimental stimuli, or design images in-house.
Examples of art used in our experiments. NOTE: all art on this page is copyrighted and may not be copied or used, except where explicit permission is granted.
1. The Jaap stimulus set (click here for full stimulus set and details about image use policy).
Artist Hillary Jaap created a set of cartoon characters and images for a paradigm designed by Elise Rosa (see Rosa & Arnold, 2017). In this language game, participants helped tell a story about a murder mystery.
2. Story comprehension Task
Artist Jovy Chan (University of Hong Kong) created these characters for experiments done in collaboration with Heeju Hwang; the same stimuli are now in use for our NSF project “Testing probability-based theories of pronoun comprehension” (2017-2019). These stimuli and more information about this project can be found here (page under construction). These images are copyrighted to Jovy Chan, Heeju Hwang, and Jennifer Arnold, 2018. For permission to use these pictures email H. Hwang or J. Arnold.
3. Preliminary art for story comprehension task
Artist Alessandra Gutierrez-Arnold (age 14 at time of creation) created a mock-up of the story comprehension task for the purposes of a grant proposal to NSF. These pictures illustrate Ana and Liz (see above for later renditions of these characters), and an example of the speaker gesturing. Images may not be used except with explicit permission (email J. Arnold).
4. Artists at work: Poser pro animated stimuli.
We are currently in the process of creating animated versions of our stimuli, using Poser Pro.
5. Illustration of a transfer verb.
This pictured (artist: Jennifer Arnold) appeared in Arnold (2011; CSLI publications) for the purpose of illustrating a transfer event (e.g., the woman gave a book to the man). This picture may be used for educational or nonprofit uses.
7. Pictures used for Exp. 1 in Arnold, Wasow, Losongco & Ginstrom (2000, Language). Artist: Reiko Ginstrom.
click here for full stimulus set and sharing policy
