Welcome to the Language and Cognition lab headed by Suphasiree Chantavarin (Ph.D.), located at the Faculty of Psychology, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Language Processing Under Cognitive and Communicative Constraints
Whether reading a message, following a conversation, or dealing with misunderstandings during communication, people often use language rapidly and automatically in daily life. Yet successful communication requires the rapid coordination of multiple cognitive processes.
Broadly, I am interested in language processing as a dynamic, context-sensitive, and experience-dependent cognitive system. My research examines how factors such as prior experience, contextual information, expectations, and emotions shape real-time language processing and interpretation, particularly in Thai as an understudied language and in multilingual contexts.
This line of research contributes to the understanding of reading and literacy in Thai, informs the development of language and cognitive assessment tools for Thai speakers, and helps identify the sources of difficulty in everyday communication.
To address these aims, the lab’s research projects combine knowledge and methods from cognitive psychology and linguistics. The lab primarily uses experimental approaches, as well as fieldwork and clinical approaches through collaborations.
3 Broad Research Themes
Theme 1: Constraint-Based Interpretation in Language Comprehension
How contextual information, prior experience, expectations, and communicative pressures (e.g., ambiguity, noise, pragmatic demands) jointly shape linguistic interpretation
Theme 2: Cognitive Constraints on Language Processing
How other cognitive systems (e.g., memory and executive functions) support and constrain language processing
Theme 3: Cross-Linguistic and Population Generalization
How well current psycholinguistic theories and models extend across languages and populations, including Thai, bilingual, and L2 speakers
Specific research lines:
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Predictive processing in sentence comprehension
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Multiword and formulaic language processing
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Reading and visual word recognition
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Language processing in Thai and other understudied languages
I also have collaborative interests in:
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language and cognitive assessment,
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language development and learning,
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bilingual language processing,
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neurophysiological approaches to language comprehension,
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and affective influences on language processing
Research Projects
1. Thai reading and visual word recognition
The Thai writing system does not typically mark word boundaries with spaces, raising questions about how readers identify words during reading. This challenge is particularly relevant for compound words, where two or more words are combined into a single word form (e.g., bath+room=bathroom), which may complicate word boundary detection during reading. While research in alphabetic languages such as English has shown how readers extract phonological, morphological, and semantic information during reading, it is less clear how these processes operate in scripts like Thai where word boundaries are not visually marked. This study uses an eye tracking to examine how interword spacing and morphological complexity (simple vs. compound words) jointly influence word identification during sentence reading in Thai.
🌱Sample paper: Eye tracking study on interword spacing and morphological complexity in Thai
2. Storage and processing of multi-word units and formulaic language
One of the distinctive features of human language is the ability to express our thoughts through an infinite number of linguistic expressions. The traditional explanation for this linguistic productivity is that we store single words alongside the grammatical rules for combining them. However, recent evidence has shown that language prevalently contains recurring patterns of multi-word sequences, leading to the view that these multi-word sequences–rather than single words–may form the basic building blocks of native-like language learning and use. How does the cognitive system coordinate the trade-off between the re-use of pre-stored multi-word sequences and the productive generation of novel linguistic expressions?
🌱Sample paper: Processing binomial phrases with variant conjunctions
3. Misinterpretations in language comprehension
The meaning of a sentence or discourse is determined by its grammatical structure, yet sometimes people form mental representations that are incomplete or outright incompatible with those structures. Misinterpretations tend to occur in sentences that are syntactically complex, such as the passive voice which mentions the "receiver" before the "actor" of the action (e.g., the mouse was chased by the cat). How, when, and why do misinterpretations occur, and how are these conflicts resolved during comprehension?
🌱Sample paper: Using nonce words to investigate the misinterpretation of implausible events
🌱PhD dissertation: Competing interpretations in the processing of noncanonical syntactic structures
4. Assessing language and cognitive functions in Thai population (collaboration)
Standard cognitive assessments tend to be developed in the context of Western cultures, but translated versions of these assessments–especially tests with verbal components–may not always be culturally appropriate, valid, or reliable in non-Western cultures. Therefore, it is crucial to develop better assessments of language and cognitive functions for the Thai population that ensure cultural appropriateness, validity, and reliability.
🌱Sample paper: Lexical decision task for estimating vocabulary knowledge in Thai (collaboration with Dr. Graham Pluck)
🌱Ongoing projects:
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Cognitive assessment battery for Thai children (collaboration with RinCO/CoALa)
5. Language and cognitive functions in healthy cognitive aging (collaboration)
Healthy aging is associated with gradual changes in sensory and cognitive functioning. Language functions are relatively well-preserved relative to other aspects of cognition (e.g., processing speed, working memory capacity, inhibition), yet some evidence suggests that certain aspects of language abilities may decline with age. For instance, speech fluency may decrease over the lifespan, reflecting the underlying age-related changes in cognitive functioning. How does the speech production system change over the lifespan, and how is it affected by other concurrent age-related changes in cognitive function?
🌱Sample paper: Rate of disfluencies across the lifespan
6. Neurophysiological mechanisms of spoken language comprehension (collaboration)
Research on the neural correlates of language processing has mostly focused on event-related potentials (ERP), which are neural responses averaged across multiple trials in the same experimental condition. Various language-related ERP components have been identified, including the N400 and the P600. A complementary measure to ERPs is neural oscillations, which are non-phase-locked responses that can be decomposed into different frequencies across time, providing an alternative way of analyzing the EEG signal. More recently, neural oscillations have been theorized to synchronize or entrain to acoustic aspects of the speech signal that convey linguistically meaningful features (e.g., rhythmic amplitude modulations that correspond to syllables or phonemes). The hypothesis, therefore, is that the brain can efficiently and rapidly process the complex speech signal by aligning its pattern of neural excitability to match the most informative parts in the signal. Nevertheless, there is ongoing debate about the causal role of neural entrainment in the temporal prediction and segmentation of speech.
🌱Sample paper: Bridging signal processing and sentence processing research on cortical tracking of speech (review article)
Graduate Students' Research Projects
Thai spoken word recognition
Spoken language comprehension depends on how the brain rapidly extracts meaning from a highly variable acoustic signal, and a central question in psycholinguistics is which parts of that signal carry the most weight in identifying words. This is especially important in tonal languages like Thai, where changes in pitch (tone) are not just expressive but can change word meaning in the same way as consonants and vowels. This project focuses on how different types of phonological information (consonants, vowels, and tone) contribute to spoken word recognition in Thai.
Speech recognition in noise
Understanding speech in noisy environments is a central challenge in auditory and language research, as background noise degrades the speech signal and forces listeners to rely on partial and sometimes ambiguous information. This requires the integration of acoustic input with higher-level cognitive processes to construct meaning. This project investigates how listeners construct meaning from degraded speech by examining both word recognition and overall sentence comprehension in a speech-in-noise perception task, as well as the cognitive processes (individual differences in working memory span) that support meaning construction.
Pragmatic cues in L2 irony
This project explores how bilingual speakers process verbal irony in L2 English, where intended meaning differs from literal wording and must be inferred from context. It is grounded in the idea that understanding nonliteral language requires integrating linguistic input with pragmatic and contextual knowledge. It investigates whether specific function words from Tagalog (pragmatic particles) embedded in English sentences influence how irony is understood, showing how bilingual linguistic resources interact during pragmatic interpretation.
Typography and word recognition
Reading and word recognition are not determined by linguistic content alone; the visual form of words can also shape how efficiently they are processed. This is especially relevant in cognitive assessment contexts, such as verbal knowledge or language-based tests used with older adults and other populations with varied visual or perceptual profiles, where differences in typography may unintentionally affect performance. This project investigates whether basic typographic properties of words, specifically font type and letter case, affect the efficiency and accuracy of visual word recognition.
Undergraduate Students' Research Projects
Inner speech and cognitive control
Inner speech is the experience of “talking to yourself in the mind,” and it has been proposed as a mechanism that supports self-control and the ability to manage competing demands in everyday thinking and behaviour. This is relevant because the ability to manage competing mental demands under distraction plays a role in everyday tasks that require sustained attention and self-control. This study examines whether individual differences in types of inner speech are related to performance on a task requiring conflict resolution (the Simon task).
Tonal language experience and music perception abilities
Tonal language experience has been suggested to influence pitch processing, raising the question of whether long-term exposure to tonal contrasts in speech also shapes how people perceive sound in non-linguistic domains such as music. Most previous research has focused on Mandarin (and to a lesser extent Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Thai) in comparison with non-tonal languages such as English. This study examines whether musical perception abilities differ between native Thai and native Mandarin speakers, allowing a comparison between two tonal language groups to examine variation in music perception abilities within tonal language experience.
Emojis and pragmatic interpretation
Digital communication often lacks prosodic and nonverbal cues that support the interpretation of implied meaning, making it more difficult to infer what speakers intend beyond literal wording. This is especially relevant in multilingual online environments, where readers must rely on limited textual information to reconstruct pragmatic meaning. This study examines how emojis influence the interpretation of indirect meaning in online communication, and how their usefulness depends on the type of conversational situation. More broadly, this work informs how simple digital cues like emojis can meaningfully shape interpretation in everyday communication.
Reading comprehension in Thai deaf readers
Differences in hearing ability can shape how individuals develop language and reading skills. Understanding how deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) readers comprehend text is crucial for identifying potential barriers in literacy and learning, particularly in contexts where spoken language input is limited or differs from typical hearing experience. This project investigates how different sentence structures—simple, compound, and complex sentences—affect reading comprehension in DHH and hearing individuals. This is particularly relevant in Thai, where relatively little to no research has investigated reading comprehension in these populations.
Typography and Thai sentence comprehension
Subtle variations in the visual form of letters within a writing system may influence how efficiently readers process written language. This project explores the possibility that subtle visual differences in Thai letter forms (looped and loopless fonts) may influence reading eficiency in terms of both reading speed and comprehension. More broadly, this issue has implications for education, digital design, and the presentation of written information in everyday contexts.
Legal language comprehension
Understanding legal language can influence how people interpret contracts, exercise their rights, comply with legal obligations, and make important personal and financial decisions. This project is a systematic review that synthesizes research on whether simplifying legal language improves comprehension, and what linguistic, cognitive, and situational factors influence how well people understand legal texts. It shows that while simplification generally helps, comprehension often remains limited, suggesting that both language features and individual differences shape how legal meaning is understood.