Faculty

Related Links
Cognitive Psychology Program
Personal Website

Research Interests
Most people know, or have stored in memory, approximately 20,000-30,000 words. If you have ever tried to look through 20,000 things for the one object you are looking for you know that it can take some time. Yet when we speak, or are spoken to, the words we are looking for seem to be found instantaneously.

My research employs several research methodologies including analyses of speech errors, experimental tasks, and computational models to examine how information pertaining to words is stored in memory and how the organization of those words in memory enables us to access that information so quickly and accurately. More precisely, I study the nature and organization of lexical representations and the processes used to retrieve information from the mental lexicon during speech production and speech perception (or spoken word recognition).

My work is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH-NIDCD R01 DC 006472).

Selected Publications
Vitevitch, M.S. & Atchley, R. A. (2006). Language processing: Development and change. Language and Speech, 49, 1-2.

Vitevitch, M.S. & Luce, P.A. (2005). Increases in phonotactic probability facilitate spoken nonword repetition. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 193-204.

Vitevitch, M.S. (2002). The influence of phonological similarity neighborhoods on speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 28, 735-747.

Vitevitch, M.S. & Luce, P.A. (1999). Probabilistic phonotactics and neighborhood activation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory & Language, 40, 374-408.