Mark S. Seidenberg
Professor
Ph.D. 1980, Columbia
Email: seidenberg@wisc.edu
The research in my lab is concerned with basic questions about the nature of
language and how it is acquired, used, and represented in the brain. Much of
this research has been concerned with reading, a particular use of language,
how reading skill is acquired by children, and forms of dyslexia that occur
developmentally or in adults as a consequence of neuropathology. This
research involves both behavioral studies and the development of large-scale
computational ("neural network") models of normal and disordered language.
The theoretical framework that was originally developed in connection with
reading is being applied to many other aspects of language, including
phonology, morphology and lexical semantics, and its implications concerning
the brain bases of language are beginning to be studied using neuroimaging.
The goal of the research is to understand the use of language and its brain
bases using computational models as the theoretical interface between the
two.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Haskell, T., MacDonald, M.C., & Seidenberg, M.S. (2003). Language
learning and innateness: Some implications of compounds research.
Cognitive Psychology, 47, 119-163.
Seidenberg, M.S., MacDonald, M.C., & Saffran, J.R. (2003). Are there limits to statistical learning? Science, 300, 51-52.
Harm, M., & Seidenberg, M.S. (2004). Computing the meanings of words in
reading: Division of labor between visual and phonological processes. Psychological Review, 111, 662-720.
Sperling, A.J., Lu, Z.-L., Manis, F., & Seidenberg, M.S. (2005). Deficits in perceptual noise exclusion in developmental dyslexia. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 862-863.
Seidenberg, M.S. (2005). Connectionist models of reading. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 238-242.
Seidenberg, M.S., & Zevin, J.D. (2006). Connectionist models in
developmental cognitive neuroscience: Critical periods and the paradox
of success. In Y. Munakata & M. Johnson (Eds.), Attention &
Performance XXI: Processes of change in brain and cognitive
development. Oxford University Press, pp. 585-612.
