Why do people believe crazy stuff? How do they assess information? In this project, we study how people process messages of different designs and within different interactional structures, relying on psycho-linguistic theories of language processing and associated research methods (e.g., self-paced reading, eye tracking, EEG). Through this approach, we gain insights into people’s immediate and, in part, unconscious responses to information. In addition, we use the framework of discursive psychology to study how cognitive states are negotiated in interaction. We are particularly interested in the role of linguistic properties of arguments and other rhetorical stratagems, such as semantics and valency of words used, specific discourse markers, grammatical properties of sentences (e.g., voice, aspect, and evidentiality), and manipulations thereof, for ease or difficulty of processing. The approach further allows us to compare responses to these online processing measures with people’s offline assessment of information, shedding new light on the effectiveness of their design.
Student projects
Emily Duckett investigates how people evaluate expert sources in arguments from expert opinion. Are they more likely to rate an argument as highly persuasive when the claim is supported by an expert they have rated as highly trustworthy, even if the topic is outside the expert’s area of expertise?
Roosmarijn Rentier analyzes the variations in the impact of the belief bias effect on participants evaluating invalid arguments. She does this by testing the acceptability rate of several invalid arguments with an acceptable statement of fact or statement of value as their conclusion.
Erynn Young is studying how racist presumptions appear in argumentative discourse on Instagram. She uses membership categorization analysis to reconstruct implicit premises, showing which predicates and actions are tied to different implicit and explicit racial categories.
Ermioni Seremata is conducting empirical research on the interaction between logical and pragmatic validity of arguments. Participants are asked to rate the acceptability of logically and pragmatically valid and invalid arguments.
Nora de Haas examines the effect of non-native English accents on the willingness to perform requests. Participants rate how likely they will perform requests pronounced in different accents and formulated using positive and negative politeness strategies.
Anna Mihlic studies the effect of “mansplaining” on speaker perception, understanding the concept as providing superfluous arguments for something already accepted by the hearer. Participants are asked to rate the “mansplainer” on likeability and masculinity / femininity.
The projects are supervised by Monique Flecken, Menno Reijven and Jean Wagemans.
Activities and publications
Conference Talk – E. Seremeta, M.H. Reijven, M.E.P. Flecken & J.H.M. Wagemans (2023). Managing expectations: The effect of logical and pragmatic validity on argument processing. ISSA 2023 Conference. Leiden University, July 6, 2023.
Seminar Talk – M. Flecken (2023). The psycholinguistics of communication. LANCAR Seminar. University of Amsterdam, March 10, 2023.
Journal Article – Reijven, M. H., Durrani, A., & Dori-Hacohen, G. (2023). “And All of That”: The Long List in Political Discourse, Contrastive Pragmatics (published online ahead of print 2023).
Conference Talk – A. Mihlic, M.E.P. Flecken & J.H.M. Wagemans (2023). Teaching your grandma to suck eggs: An empirical study into argumentative mansplaining. Eight International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (PhiLang 2023). University of Łódź, Poland. May 13, 2023.
Journal Article – Kamenetski, A., Lai, V. T., & Flecken, M. (2022). Minding the manner: attention to motion events in Turkish–Dutch early bilinguals. Language and Cognition, 14(3), 456-478.
Journal Article – Misersky, J., Peeters, D., & Flecken, M. (2022). The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for the Study of Event Perception. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 3, [697934].
LANCAR 