Dr Louise Connell BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD
Research
My research interests surround cognitive science and embodied cognition. Specifically, I'm interested in how mental representations and conceptual thought are grounded and how we access and use these representations in language. Some recent work has examined how people represent implied perceptual information about the colour of objects during language comprehension, how modality-specific language (describing what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell) is processed, and also how people combine concepts into linguistic compounds.
I am also interested in cognitive modelling and how hybrid systems - using statistical, symbolic and/or connectionist elements - can help us to understand the complexities of human cognition.
Biography
I received a BSc in Computer Applications from Dublin City University in 1999, and followed it with an MSc in Cognitive Science & Natural Language at the University of Edinburgh in 2000. My PhD was awarded by University College Dublin in 2004. Following two years lecturing at Northumbria University, I joined the University of Manchester in January 2007 as a lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences.
Collaborators and affiliated staff
Dr. Dermot Lynott
Decision & Cognitive Sciences Research Centre, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
Dr. Andrew Stewart
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
Dr. Judith Holler
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
Selected publications
2010
- Connell, L., & Lynott, D. (2010). Look but don't touch: Tactile disadvantage in processing modality-specific words. Cognition, 115, 1-9. eScholarID:54040 | DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.10.005
2009
- Connell L, Lynott D. (2009). Is a bear white in the woods? Parallel representation of implied object color during language comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, eScholarID:1d18480 | DOI:10.3758/PBR.16.3.573
- Lynott, D., Connell, L. (2009). Modality exclusivity norms for 423 object properties. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 558-564. eScholarID:1d19006 | DOI:10.3758/BRM.41.2.558
2007
- Connell L. (2007). Representing object colour in language comprehension. Cognition, 102, 476-485. eScholarID:1d14959 | DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.02.009
2006
- Connell L, Keane MT. (2006). A model of plausibility. Cognitive Science, 30, 95-120. eScholarID:1d14962 | DOI:10.1207/s15516709cog0000_53
2004
- Connell L, Keane M. (2004). What plausibly affects plausibility? Concept coherence and distributional word coherence as factors influencing plausibility judgments. Memory & Cognition, 32, 185-197. eScholarID:1d14960