Communication between humans typically occurs effortlessly despite the imperfect nature of language input (e.g., due to speech errors, ambiguities) and the complexity of inferences involved in decoding its meaning (e.g., the speaker’s knowledge state). Prof. Ryskin studies how individuals achieve impressively efficient language processing in the face of ambiguity, variability, and noise, as well as how this ability changes over the lifespan or breaks down in individuals with language disorders (e.g., aphasia). Ryskin combines insights from eye-tracking, electrophysiology, computational approaches, fieldwork, and neuropsychology to understand how people use various sources of information (visuo-spatial perspective, theory of mind, language statistics, etc.) to generate and constrain their linguistic predictions, as well as the learning and memory processes that underpin these representations.
